Gass D s3 A O-Q- { 
Book JtAS— 



Is Life Worth Living? 

BT 

WILLIAM HTJRRELL MALLOCK, 

II 

JJTPKOB OF M THE NEW BEPUBLIC,* ETC 




'* Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.'* 

" How dieth the wise man? As the fool That which befalleth the sons of men 

befalleth the beasts, even one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth so dieth the other, 
yea they have all one breath ; so that man hath no preeminence above a beast ; for aU is 
vanity." 

c raXatVcopos eya> avdpwTros, rts fi€ pi'Scrai €K tov (jco/xaros rem 

Qa.v6.TQV TOVTOV / 



JOHN 



NEW YORK: 

WURTELE LOVELL. 
1880. 



33 cTiod^ 
• Ml 



I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK 

TO 

JOHN RUSKIN. 



TO JOHN RUSKIN 



My dear Mr. Ruskin, — You have given me very great 
pleasure by allowing me to inscribe this book to you, and 
for two reasons ; for I have two kinds of acknowledgment 
that I wish to make to you — first, that of an intellectual 
debtor to a public teacher; secondly, that of a private 
friend to the kindest of private friends. The tribute I 
have to offer you is, it is true, a small one ; and it is pos- 
sibly more blessed for me to give than it is for you to 
receive it. In so far, at least, as I represent any influence 
of yours, you may very possibly not think me a satisfac- 
tory representative. But there is one fact — and I will 
lay all the stress I can on it — which makes me less diffi- 
dent than I might be, in offering this book either to you 
or to the world generally. 

The import of the book is independent of the book itself, 
and of the author of it ; nor do the arguments it contains 
stand or fall with my success in stating them ; and these 
last at least I may associate with your name. They are 
not mine. I have not discovered or invented them. They 
are so obvious that any one who chooses may see them ; 
and I have been only moved to meddle with them, because, 
from being so obvious, it seems that no one will so much 
as deign to look at them, or at any rate to put them 
together with any care or completeness. They might be 
before everybody's eyes; but instead they are under every- 
body's feet. My occupation has been merely to kneel in 



xii. 



To John Ruskin. 



the mud, and to pick up the truths that are being trampled 
into it, by a headstrong and uneducated generation. 

With what success I have done this, it is not for me to 
judge. Bufc though I cannot be confident of the value of 
what I have done, I am confident enough of the value of 
what I have tried to do. From a literary point of view 
many faults may be found with me. There may be faults 
yet deeper, to which possibly I shall have to plead guilty- 
I niay — I cannot tell — have unduly emphasized some 
points, and not put enough emphasis on others. I may be 
convicted — nothing is more likely — of many verbal incon- 
sistencies. But let the arguments I have done my best to 
embody be taken as a whole, and they have a vitality 
that does not depend upon me ; nor can they be proved 
false, because my ignorance or weakness may here or there 
have associated them with, or illustrated them by, a false- 
hood. I am not myself conscious of any such falsehoods 
in my book ; but if such are pointed out to me, I shall do 
my best to correct them. If what I have done prove not 
worth correction, others coming after me will be preferred 
before me, and are sure before long to address themselves 
successfully to the same task in which I perhaps have 
failed. What indeed can we each of us look for but a 
large measure of failure, especially when we are moving 
not with the tide but against it — when the things we 
wrestle with are principalities and powers, and spiritual 
stupidity in high places — and when we are ourselves 
partly weakened by the very influences against which 
we are struggling ? 

But this is not all. There is in the way another diffi- 
culty. Writing as the well-wishers of truth and goodness, 



To John Ruskin. 



we find, as the world now stands, that our chief foes are 
they of our own household. The insolence, the ignorance, 
and the stupidity of the age has embodied itself, and found 
its mouthpiece, in men who are personally the negation? 
of all that they represent theoretically. We have men 
who in private are full of the most gracious modesty, 
representing in their philosophies the most ludicrous arro- 
gance; we have men who practise every virtue themselves 
proclaiming the principles of every vice to others; we 
have men who have mastered many kinds of knowledge 
acting on the world only as embodiments of the completest 
and most pernicious ignorance. I have had occasion tc 
deal continually with certain of these by name. With 
the exception of one — who has died prematurely, whilst 
this book was in the press — those I have named oftenest 
are still living. Many of them probably are known tc 
you personally, though none of them are so known to me 
and you will appreciate the sort of difficulty I have felt 
better than I can express it. I can only hope that as the 
falsehood of their arguments cannot blind any of us tc 
their personal merits, so no intellectual demerits in my 
case will be prejudicial to the truth of my arguments. 

To me the strange thing is that such arguments should 
have to be used at all ; and perhaps a thing stranger still 
that it should fall to me to use them — to me, an outsidei 
in philosophy, in literature, and in theology. But the 
justification of my speaking is that there is any opening 
for me to speak ; and others must be blamed, not I, if 

" the lyre so long divine 
Degenerates into hands like mine." 

At any rate, however all this may be, what I here in- 



xiv. 



To John Buskin. 



scribe to you, my friend and teacher, I am confident is not 
unworthy of you. It is not what I have done ; it is what 
t have tried to do. As such I beg you to accept it, and 
to believe me still, though now so seldom near you, 

Your admiring and affectionate friend, 

W. H. MALLOCK. 



NOTE 



In this hook the words "positive" " positivist" and "posi- 
tivism 11 are of constant occurrence as applied to modern thought 
and thinkers. To avoid any chance of confusion or misconcep- 
tion, it will be well to say that these words as used by me have 
no special reference to the system of Comte or his disciples, 
but are applied to the common views and position of the whole 
scientific school, one of the most eminent members of which — 
I mean Professor Huxley — has been the most trenchant and 
contemptuous critic that "positivism" in its narrower sens© 
has met with. Over "positivism" in this sense Professor 
Huxley and Mr. Frederic Harrison have had some public 
battles. Positivism in the sense in which it is used by me, 
applies to the principles as to which the above writers ex- 
plicitly agree, not to those as to which they differ, 



H. M. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The New Import of the Question •••••••• I 7 

CHAPTER IL 

Morality and the Prize of Life 47 

CHAPTER IIL 

Sociology as the Foundation of Morality 62 
CHAPTER TV. 

Goodness as its own Reward • 89 

CHAPTER V. 

Love as a Test of Goodness r H*J 

CHAPTER VI. 

Life as its own Reward • •••••• 1 43 

CHAPTER VII 

The Superstition of Positivism 173 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Practical Prospect 192 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Logic of Scientific Negation 216 

CHAPTER X. 

Morality and Natural Theism 254 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Human Race and Revelation . . 271 

CHAPTER XII. 

Universal History and the Claims of the Christian Church .... 303 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Belief and Will 32G 



Is Life Worth Living? 



CHAPTER I. 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 



" A change was coming over the world, the meaning and direc- 
tion of which even still is hidden from us 9 a change from era to 
era." — Froude's History of England, ch. i. 



HAT I am about to deal with in this book is 



• * a question which may well strike many, at 
first sight, as a question that has no serious mean- 
ing, or none at any rate for the sane and healthy 
mind. I am about to attempt inquiring, not senti- 
mentally, but with all calmness and sobriety, into 
the true value of this human life of ours, as tried 
by those tests of reality which the modern world 
is accepting, and to ask dispassionately if it be 
really worth the living. The inquiry certainly has 
often been made before ; but it has never been 
made properly; it has never been made in the 
true scientific spirit. It has always been vitiated 
either by diffidence or by personal feeling ; and the 
positive school, though they rejoice to question 
everything else, have, at least in this country, left 
the worth of life alone. They may now and then, 
perhaps, have affected to examine it ; but their 
examination has been merely formal, like that of 




2 



18 



Is Lijfe Worth Living? 



a custom-house officer, who passes a portmanteau 
which he has only opened. They have been as ten- 
der with it as Don Quixote was with his mended 
helmet, when he would not put his card-paper visor 
to the test of the steel sword. I propose to supply 
this deficiency in their investigations. I propose 
to apply exact thought to the only great subject 
to which it has not been applied already. 

To numbers, as I have just said, this will of 
course seem useless. They will think that the 
question never really was an open one ; or that, if 
it ever were so, the common sense of mankind has 
long ago finally settled it. To ask it again, they 
will think idle, or worse than idle. It will express 
to them, if it expresses anything, no perplexity 
of the intellect, but merely some vague disease of 
the feelings. They will say that it is but the old 
ejaculation of satiety or despair, as old as human 
nature itself; it is a kind of maundering common 
to all moral dyspepsia ; they have often heard it be- 
fore, and they wish they may never hear it again. 

"But let them be a little less impatient. Let 
then; L-:voiv * ■ i liie question closer, and more calmly ; 
and it will not be long before its import begins to 
change for them. They will see that though it 
may have often been asked idly, it is yet capable 
of a meaning that is very far from idle ; and that 
however old they may think it, yet as asked by 
our generation it is really completely new — that 
it bears a meaning which is indeed not far from 



The New Import of the Question. 



19 



any one ot them, but which is practical and press- 
ing — I might almost say portentous — and which is 
something literally unexampled in the past history 
of mankind. 

I am aware that this position is not only not at 
first sight obvious, but thaV oven when better 
understood, it will probably be called false. My 
first care, therefore, will be to explain it at length, 
and clearly. For this purpose we must consider 
two points in order ; first, what is the exact doubt 
we intend to express by our question ; and next, 
why in our day this doubt should have such a 
special and fresh significance. 

Let us then make it quite plain, at starting, that 
when we ask "Is life worth living?" we are not 
asking whether its balance of pains is necessarily 
and always in excess of its balance of pleasures. 
We are not asking whether any one has been, or 
whether any one is happy. To the unjaundiced 
eye nothing is more clear than that happiness of 
various kinds has been, and is, continually attained 
by men. And ingenious pessimists do but waste 
their labour when they try to convince a happy 
man that he really must be miserable. What I 
am going to discuss is not the superfluous truism 
that life has been found worth living by many • 
but the profoundly different proposition that it 
ought to be found worth living by all. For this is 
what life is pronounced to be, when those claims are 
made for it that at present universally are made ; 



20 



Is Life Worth Living? 



when, as a general truth, it is said to be worth 
living ; or when any of those august epithets are 
applied to it that are at present applied so con- 
stantly. At present, as we all know, it is called 
sacred, solemn, earnest, significant, and so forth. 
To withhold such epithets is considered a kind of 
blasphemy. And the meaning of all such lan- 
guage is this : it means that life has some deep 
inherent worth of its own, beyond what it can ac- 
quire or lose by the caprice of circumstance — a 
worth, which though it may be most fully revealed 
to a man, through certain forms of success, is yet 
not destroyed or made a minus quantity by failure. 
Certain forms of love, for instance, are held in a 
special way to reveal this worth to us ; but the 
worth that a successful love is thus supposed to 
reveal is a worth that a hopeless love is supposed 
not to destroy. The worth is a part of life's 
essence, not a mere chance accident, as health or 
riches are ; and we are supposed to lose it by no 
acts but our own. 

Now it is evident that such a worth as this, is, 
in one sense, no mere fancy. Numbers actually 
have found it; and numbers actually still continue 
to find it. The question is not whether the worth 
exists, but on what is the worth based. How far 
is the treasure incorruptible ; and how far will our 
increasing knowledge act as moth and rust to it ? 
There are some things whose value is completely 
established by the mere fact that men do value 1 



The, Npm Import oj the Question. 21 



them. They appeal to single tastes, they defy 
further analysis, and they thus form, as it were, 
the bases of all pleasures and happiness. But these 
are few in number ; they are hardly ever met with 
in a perfectly pure state ; and their effect, when 
they are so met, is either momentary, or far from 
vivid. As a rule they are found in combinations 
of great complexity, fused into an infinity of new 
substances by the action of beliefs and associa- 
tions ; and these two agents are often of more im- 
portance in the result than are the things they act 
upon. Take for instance a boy at Eton or Oxford, 
who affects a taste in wine. Give him a bottle of 
gooseberry champagne ; tell him it is of the finest 
brand, and that it cost two hundred shillings a 
dozen. He will sniff, and wink at it in ecstasy; he 
will sip it slowly with an air of knowing reverence ; 
and his enjoj^ment of it probably will be far keener, 
than it would be, were the wine really all he fan- 
cies it, and he had lived years enough to have 
come to discern its qualities. Here the part played 
by belief and associations is of course evident. 
The boy's enjoyment is real, and it rests to a cer- 
tain extent on a foundation of solid fact; the taste 
of the gooseberry champagne is an actual pleasure 
to his palate. Anything nauseous, black dose for 
instance, could never raise him to the state of de- 
light in question. But this simple pleasure of 
sense is but a small part of the pleasure he actu- 
ally experiences. That pleasure, as a whole, is a 

V 



22 



Is Life Worth Living? 



highly complex thing, raid rests mainly on a basis 
that, by a little knowledge, could be annihilated 
in a moment. Tell the boy what the champagne 
really is, he has been praising ; and the state of 
his mind and face will undergo a curious transfor- 
mation. Our sense of the worth of life is similar 
in its complexity to the boy's sense of the w r orth 
of his wine. Beliefs and associations play exactly 
the same part in it. The beliefs in this last case 
may of course be truer. The question that I have 
to ask is, are they ? In some individual cases cer- 
tainly, they have not been. Miss Harriet Marti- 
neau,for instance, judging life from her own experi- 
ence of it, w T as quite persuaded that it was a most 
solemn and satisfactory thing, and she has told the 
world as much, in no hesitating manner. But a 
part at least of the solemn satisfaction she felt in it 
was due to a grotesque over-estimate of .her own 
social and intellectual importance. Here, then, was 
a worth in life, real enough to the person who found 
it, but which a little knowledge of the world would 
have at once taken away from her. Does the 
general reverence with which life is at present re- 
garded rest in any degree upon any similar mis- 
conception ? And if so, to what extent does it ? 
Will it fall to pieces before the breath of a larger 
knowledge ? or has it that firm foundation in fact 
that will enable it to survive in spite of all enlight- 
enment, and perhaps even to increase in conse- 
quence of it ? 



The New Import of the Question. 



23 



Such is the outline of the question I propose to 
deal with. I will now show why it is so pressing, 
and why, in the present crisis of thought, it is so 
needful that it should be dealt with. The first 
impression it produces, as I have said, is that it is 
superfluous. Our belief in life seems to rest on 
too wide an experience for us to entertain any 
genuine doubt of the truth of it. But this first 
impression docs not go for much. It is a mere 
superficial thing, and will wear off immediately. 
We have but to remember that a belief that was 
supposed to rest on an equally wide basis — the 
belief in God, and in a supernatural order— has in 
these days, not been questioned only, but lias been 
to a great degree, successfully annihilated. The 
only philosophy that belongs to the present age, 
the only philosophy that is a really new agent in 
progress, has declared this belief to be a dissolv- 
ing dream of the past. And this belief, as we shall 
see presently, is, amongst civilized men at least, 
far older than the belief in life; it has been far 
more widely spread, and experience has been held 
tc confirm it, with an equal certainty If this then 
is inevitably disintegrated by the action of a widen- 
ing knowledge, it cannot be taken for granted 
that the behet in life will not fare likewise. It 
may dc so; but until we have examined it more 
closely we cannot be certain that it will. Com- 
Vmon consent and experience, until they are ana- 
yscd, are fallacious tests for the seekers after 



24 



Is Life Worth Living? 



positive truth. The emotions may forbid us to 
ask our question ; but in modern philosophy the 
emotions play no part as organs of discovery. 
They are facts in themselves, and as such are of 
course of value ; but they point to no facts beyond 
themselves. That men loved God and felt his 
presence close to them proves nothing, to the posi- 
tive thinker, as to God's existence. Nor will the 
mere emotion of reverence towards life necessarily 
go any farther towards proving that it deserves 
reverence. It is distinctly asserted by the modern 
school that the right state in which to approach 
everything is a state of enlightened skepticism. 
We are to consider everything doubtful, until it 
is proved certain, or unless, from its very nature, 
it is not possible to doubt it. 

Nor is this all; for, apart from these modern 
canons, the question of life's worth has, as a mat- 
ter of fact, been always recognized as in a certain 
sense an open one. The greatest intellects of the 
world, in all ages, have been at times inclined to 
doubt it. And these times have not seemed to 
them times of blindness; but on the contrary, of 
specially clear insight. Scales, as it were, have 
fallen from their eyes for a moment or two, and 
the beauty and worth of existence has appeared 
to them as but a deceiving show. An entire book 
of the Hebrew Scriptures is devoted to a deli- 
berate exposition of this philosophy. In "the most 
high and palmy state" of Athens it was expressed 



The New Import of the Question. 25 



fitfully also as the deepest wisdom of her most 
triumphant dramatist/" And in Shakspeare it 
appears so constantly, that it must evidently have 
had for him some directly personal meaning. 

This view, however, even by most of those who 
have held it, has been felt to be really only a half- 
view in the guise of a whole one. To Shakspeare, 
for instance, it was full of a profound terror. It 
crushed, and appalled, and touched him; and 
there was not only implied in it that for us life 
does mean little, but that by some possibility it 
might have meant much. Or else, if the pessi- 
mism has been more complete than this, .it has 
probably been adopted as a kind of solemn affec- 
tation, or has else been lamented as a form of 
diseased melancholy. It is a view that healthy 
intellects have hitherto declined to entertain. Its 
advocates have been met with neglect, contempt, 
or castigation, not with arguments. They have 
been pitied as insane, avoided as cynical, or passed 
over as frivolous. And yet, but for one reason, to 
that whole European world whose progress we 
are now inheriting, this view would have seemed 
not only not untenable, but even obvious. The 
emptiness of the things of this life, the incomplete- 
ness of even its highest pleasures, and their utter 
powerlessness to make us really happy, has been, 
at least for fifteen hundred years, a commonplace, 
both with saints and sages. The conception that 



* Vide Sophocles, CEdipus Coloneus. 



26 



Is Life Worth Living? 



anything in this life could of itself be of any great 
moment to us, was considered as much a puerility 
unworthy of a man of the world, as a disloyalty 
to God. Experience of life, and meditation 
on life, seemed to teach nothing but the >same 
lesson, seemed to preach a sermon de enntemptu 
mundi. The view the eager monk began with, the 
sated monarch ended with. But matters did not 
end here. There was something more to come, 
by which this view was altogether transmuted, 
and which made the wilderness and the waste 
place at once blossom as the rose. Judged of by 
itself, this life would indeed be vanity; but it was 
not to be judged of by itself. All its ways seemed 
to break short aimlessly into precipices, or to be 
lost hopelessly in deserts. They led to no visible 
end. True; but they led to ends that were in- 
visible — to spiritual and eternal destinies, to tri- 
umphs beyond all hope, and portentous failures 
beyond all fear. This all men might see, if they 
would only choose to see. The most trivial of our 
daily actions became thus invested with an im- 
measurable meaning. Life was thus evidently 
not vanity, not an idiot's tale, not unprofitable ; 
those who affected to think it was, were naturally 
disregarded as either insane or insincere : and we 
may thus admit that hitherto, for the progressive 
nations of the world, the worth of life has been 
capable of demonstration, and sale beyond the 
reach of any rational questioning. 



T/ie J\ew Import of the Question. 27 



But now, under the influence of positive thought, 
all this is changing. Life, as we have all of us 
inherited it, is colored with the intense colors 
of Christianity; let us ourselves be personally 
Christians or not, we are instinct with feelings 
with regard to it that were applicable to it in its 
Christian state ; and these feelings it is that we 
are still resolved to retain. As the most popular 
English exponent of the new school says : "All 
positive methods of treating man, of a compre- 
hensive kind, adopt to the full all that has been 
said about the dignity of man's moral and spiritual 
life." But here comes the difficulty. This adop- 
tion we speak of must be justified upon quite new 
reasons. Indeed it is practically the boast of its 
advocates that it must be. An extreme value, as 
we see, they are resolved to give to life ; they will 
not tolerate those who deny its existence. But 
they are obliged to find it in the very place where 
hitherto it has been thought to be conspicuous by 
its absence. It is to be found in no better or 
wider future, where injustice shall be turned to 
justice, trouble into rest, and blindness into clear 
sight ; for no such future awaits us. It is to be 
found in life itself, in this earthly life, this life be- 
tween the cradle and the grave ; and though im- 
agination and sympathy may enlarge and extend 
Ihis for the individual, yet the limits of its exten- 
sion are very soon arrived at. It is limited by the 
time the human race can exist, by the space in 



28 



Is Life Worth Living? 



the universe that the human race occupies, and 
the capacities of enjoyment that the human race 
possesses. Here, then, is a distinct and intel- 
ligible task that the positive thinkers have set 
themselves. They have taken everything away 
from life that to wise men hitherto has seemed to 
redeem it from vanity. They have to prove to us 
that they have not left it vain. They have to 
prove those things to be solid that have hitherto 
been thought hollow; those things to be serious 
that have hitherto been thought contemptible. 
They must prove to us that we shall be contented 
with what has never yet contented us, and that 
the widest minds will thrive within limits that 
have hitherto been thought too narrow for the 
narrowest. 

Now, of course, so far as we can tell without 
examining the matter, they may be able to accom- 
plish this revolution. There is nothing on the 
face of it that is impossible. It may be that our 
eyes are only blinded to the beauty of the earth 
by having gazed so long and so vainly into an 
empty heaven, and that when we have learnt to 
use them a little more to the purpose, we shall see 
close at hand in this life what we had been look- 
ing for, all this while, in another. But still, even 
if this revolution be possible, the fact remains 
that it is a revolution, and it cannot be accom- 
plished without some effort. Our positive think- 
ers have a case to be proved. They must not beg 



The ]\ew Import of the Question. 29 



the very point that is most open to contradiction, 
and which, when once duly apprehended, will be 
most sure to provoke it. If this life be not in- 
capable of satisfying us, let them show us con- 
clusively that it is not. But they can hardly 
expect that, without any suqh showing at all, the 
world will deliberately repel as a blasphemy what 
it has hitherto accepted as a common-place. 

This objection is itself so obvious that it has 
not escaped notice. But the very fact of its ob- 
viousness has tended to hide the true force of it, 
and coming so readily to the surface, it has been 
set down as superficial. It is, however, very con- 
stantly recognised, and is being met on all sides 
with a very elaborate answer. It is this answer 
that I shall now proceed to consider. It is a very 
important one, and it deserves our most close at- 
tention, as it contains the chief present argument 
for the positive faith in life. I shall show how 
this argument is vitiated by a fundamental fallacy. 

It is admitted that to a hasty glance there may 
certainly seem some danger of our faith in life's 
value collapsing, together with our belief in God. 
It is admitted that this is not in the least irra- 
tional. But it is contended that a scientific study 
of the past will show us that these fears are 
groundless, and will re-assure us as to the future. 
We are referred to a new branch of knowledge, 
the philosophy of history, and we are assured that 
by this all our doubts will be set at rest. This 



30 



Is Life Worth Living? 



philosophy of history resembles, on an extended 
scale, the practical wisdom learnt by the man of 
the world As long as a man is inexperienced 
and new to life, each calamity as it comes to him 
seems something unique and overwhelming, but 
as he lives on, suffers more of them, and yet finds 
that he is not overwhelmed, he learns to reduce 
them to their right dimensions, and is able, with 
sufficient self-possession, to let each of them teach 
some useful lesson to him. 

Thus we, it is said, if we were not better in- 
structed, might naturally take the present decline 
of faith to be an unprecedented calamity that was 
ushering in an eve of darkness and utter ruin. 
But the philosophy of history puts the whole mat- 
ter in a different light. It teaches us that the 
condition of the world in our day, though not 
normal, is yet by no means peculiar. It points to 
numerous parallels in former ages, and treats the 
rise and fall of creeds as regular phenomena in 
human history, whose causes and recurrence we 
can distinctly trace. Other nations and races 
have had creeds, and have lost them ; they have 
thought, as some of us think, that the loss would 
ruin them : and yet they have not been ruined. 
Creeds, it is contended, were imaginative, pro- 
visional, and mistaken expressions of the under- 
lying and indestructible sense of the nobility of 
human life. They were artistic, not scientific. A 
statue of Apollo, for instance, or a picture of the 



The New Import of the Question. 81 



Madonna, were really representations of what men 
aimed at producing on earth, not of what actually 
had any existence m heaven. And if we look 
back at the greatest civilisations of antiquity, we 
shall find, it is said, that what gave them vigor 
and intensity were purely human interests : and 
though religion may certainly have had some re- 
flex action on life, this action was cither merely 
political or was else injurious. It is thus that 
that intense Greek life is presented to us, the in- 
fluence of which is still felt in the world. Its 
main stimulus we are told was frankly human. 
It would have lost none of its keenness if its theo- 
logy had been taken from it. And there, it is said, 
we see the positive worth of life ; we see already 
realised what we are now growing to realise once 
more. Christianity, with its supernatural aims 
and objects, is spoken of as ar, " episode of disease 
and delirium it i.° a confus dream, from 
which we are at last awaking; and the feelings 
of the modern school are expressed \ \ the follow- 
ing sentence of a distinguished modern writer:* 
" Just as the traveller," he says, "who has been 
worn to the bone by years of weary striving among 
men of another skin, suddenly gazes with doubting 
eyes upon the white face of a brother, so if we 
travel backwards in thought over the darker ages 
of the history of Europe we at length reach' back 



* Professor Clifford, whose study of history teads him to regard Catholi* 
«ism as nothing more than an "episode " in the history of Western progress. 



32 



7s Life Worth Living? 



with such bounding heart to men who had like 
hopes with ourselves, and shake hands across that 
vast with . . . our own spiritual ancestors." 

Nor are the Greeks the only nation whose his- 
tory is supposed to be thus so reassuring to us„ 
The early Jews are pointed to, in the same way, 
as having felt pre-eminently the dignity of this 
life, and having yet been absolutely without any 
belief in another. But the example, which for 
us is perhaps the most forcible of all, is to be 
found in the history of Rome, during her years 
of widest activity. "We are told to look at such 
men as Cicero or at Caesar — above all to such men 
as Caesar — and to remember what a reality life 
was to them. Caesar certainly had little religion 
enough; and what he may have had, played no 
part in making his life earnest. He took the 
world as he found it, as all healthy men have taken 
it ; and, as it is said, all healthy men will still con- 
tinue to take it. Nor was such a life as Caesar's 
peculiar to himself. It represents that purely 
human life that flourished generally in such vigor 
amongst the Romans. And the consideration of 
it is said to be all the more instructive, because it 
flourished in the face of just the same conditions 
that we think so disheartening now. There was 
in those times, as there is in ours, a wide disinte- 
gration of the old faiths; and to many, then as 
now, this fact seemed at once sad and terrifying. 
As we read Juvenal, Petronius Lucian, or 



The New import of the Question. 33 



Anuleius, we are astounded at the likeness oi 
those times to these. Even in minute details, 
they correspond with a marvellous exactness. 
And hence there stems a strange force in the state- 
ment that history repeats itself, and that the wis- 
dom learnt from the past can be applied to the 
present and the future. 

But all this, though it is doubtless true, is in 
reality only half the truth; and as used in the 
arguments of the day, it amounts practically to a 
profound falsehood. History in a certain sense, 
of course, does repeat itself; and the thing that 
has been is in a certain sense the thing that shall 
be. But there is a deeper and a wider sense in 
which this is not so. Let us take the life of an 
individual man, for instance. A man of fifty will 
retain very likely many of the tastes and tricks 
that were his, when a boy of ten ; and people 
who have known him long will often exclaim that 
he is just the same as he always was. But in 
spite of this, they will know that he is very dif- 
ferent. His hopes will have dwindled down ; tho 
glow, the color, and the bright haze will have 
gone from them ; things that once amused him 
will amuse him no more : things he once thought 
important, he will consider weary trifles ; and if 
he thinks anything serious at all, they will not be 
things he thought serious when a boy. The same 
thing is true of the year, and its changing seasons. 
The history o: a single year may be, 111 one sei:s? ; 



Is Life Worth Living? 



said to repeat itself every day. There is the same 
recurrence of light and darkness, of sunrise and 
of sunset : and a man who had lived only for a 
month or two, might fancy that this recurrence 
was complete. But let him live a little longer, 
and he will come to see that this is not so. 
Slowly through the summer he will begin to dis- 
cern a change ; until at last he can contrast the 
days and nights of winter with the clays and nights 
of summer, and see how flowers that once opened 
"resh every morning, now never open or close at 
,11. Then he will see that the two seasons, though 
1:1 many points so like each other, are yet, in a 
Tar deeper way, different. 

And so it is with the world's history. Isolate 
certain phenomena, and they do, without doubt, 
repeat themselves; but it is only when isolated 
that they can be said to do so. In many points 
the European thought and civilisation of to-day 
may seem to be a repetition of what has been be- 
fore ; we may fancy that we recognise our brothers 
in the past, and that we can, as the writer above 
quoted says, shake hands with them across the 
intervening years. But this is really only a de- 
ceiving fancy, when applied to such deep and 
universal questions as those we have now to elect! 
with — to religion, to positive thought, and 10 the 
worth of life. The positivists and the unbelievers 
of the modern world, are not the same as those of 
the ancient voiid. Even when their language is 



The New Import of the Question. 35 



identical, there is an immeasurable gulf between 
them. In our denials and assertions there are 
certain new factors, which at once make all such 
comparisons worthless. The importance of these 
will by-and-by appear more clearly, but I shall 
give a brief account of them now. 

The first of these factors is the existence of 
Christianity, and that vast and undoubted change 
in the world of which it has been at once the 
cause and the index. It has done a work, and 
that work still remains : and we all feel the effects 
of it, whether we will or no. Described in the 
most general way, that work has been this. The 
supernatural, in the ancient world, was something 
vague and indefinite : and the classical theologies 
at any rate, though they were to some extent 
formal embodiments of it, could embody really 
but a very small part. Zeus and the Olympian 
hierarchies were dimly perceived to be encircled 
by some vaster mystery; which to the popular 
mind was altogether formless, and Avhich even 
such men as Plato could only describe inade- 
quately. The supernatural was like a dim and 
diffused light, brighter in some places, and darker 
in others, but focalised and concentrated nowhere. 
Christianity has localised it, united into one the 
scattered points of brightness, and collected other 
rays that were before altogether imperceptible. 
That vague " idea of the good/' of which Plato 
said most men dimly augured the existence, but 



Is Life Worth Living? 



could not express tlieir augury, has been given a 
definite shape to by Christianity in the form of its 
Deity. That Deity, from an external point of 
view, may be said to have acquired His sover- 
eignty as did the Roman Caesar. He absorbed 
into His own person the offices of all the gods 
that were before him, as the Roman Ccesar ab- 
sorbed ah the offices of the state ; and in His case 
also, as has been said of the Roman Caesar, the 
whole was immeasurably greater than the mere 
sum of the parts. Scientifically and philosophi- 
cally He became the first cause of the world ; He 
became the father of the human soul, and its 
judge ; and what is more, its rest and its delight, 
and its desire. Under the light of this conception, 
man appeared an ampler being. His thoughts 
were for ever being gazed on by the great con- 
troller of all things ; he was made in the likeness 
of the Lord of lords ; he was of kin to the power 
before which all the visible world trembled ; and 
every detail in the life of a human soul became 
vaster, beyond all comparison, than the depths of 
space and time. But not only did the sense of 
man's dignity thus develop, and become definite. 
The accompanying sense of his degradation be- 
came intenser and more definite also. The iiloom 
of a sens 3 of sin is to be found in .ZEschyius, but 
this gloom was vague and formless. Christianity 
gave to it both depth and form ; only the despair 
that might have been produced in this way was 



The Neiv Import of the Question. J7 



now softened by hope. Christianity has, in fact, 
declared clearly a supernatural of which men be- 
fore were more or less ignorantly conscious. The 
declaration may or may not have been a complete 
one, but at any rat'3 it is the completest that the 
world has yet known. And the practical result 
is this : when we, in these days, deny the super- 
natural, we are denying it in a way in which it 
was never denied before. Our denial is beyond 
all comparison more complete. The supernatural, 
for the ancient world, was like a perfume scenting 
life, out of a hundred different vessels, of which 
only two or three were visible to the same men 
or nations. They therefore might get rid of these, 
and yet the larger part of the scent would still 
remain to them. But for us, it is as though all 
the perfume had been collected into a single 
vessel ; and if we get rid of this, we shall get rid 
of the scent altogether. Our air will be altogether 
odorless. 

The materialism of Lucretius is a good instance 
of this. In many ways his denials bear a strong 
resemblance to ours. But the resemblance ceases 
a little below the surface. He denied the theo- 
logy of his time as strongly as our positive think- 
ers deny the theology of ours. But the theology 
he denied was incomplete and puerile. He was 
not denying any "All-embracer and All-sustaiiier," 
for he knew of none such. And his denial of the 
gods he did deny left him room for the affirmation 



38 



Is Lije Wovtli Living? 



of others, whose existence, if considered accurate 
\y, was equally inconsistent with his own scienti- 
fic premises. Again, in his denial of any immor- 
tality for man, what he denied is not the future 
that we are denying. The only future he knew of 
was one a belief in which had no influence on us, 
except for sadness. It was a protraction only of 
what is worst in life ; it was in no way a com- 
pletion of what is best in it. But with us the case 
is altogether different. Formerly the supernatural 
could not be denied completely, because it was not 
known completely. Not to affirm is a very differ- 
ent thing from to deny. And many beliefs which 
the positivists of the modern world are denying, 
the positivists of the ancient world more or less 
consciously lived by. 

Next, there is this point to remember. Whilst 
during the Christian centuries, the devotion to a 
supernatural and extramundane aim has been en- 
gendering, as a recent writer has observed with 
indignation, a degrading "pessimism as to the 
essential dignity of man,"* the world which wo 
have been to a certain extent disregarding has been 
ehamnn^ its character for us. In a number of 
ways, whilst we have not been perceiving it, its 
objective crandeur has been dwindling: and the 
imagination, when again called to the feat, cannot 
reinvest it with its old gorgeous coloring. Once 
the world, with the human race, who were the 



* Mr. Frederic Harrison. 



The New Import of the Question* GO 



masters of it, was a thing of vast magnitude — the 
centre of the whole creation. The mind had nri 
larger conceptions that were vivid enough to dwarf 
it. But now all this has changed. In the worths 
of a well-known modern English historian, " The 
floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, has sunk baci. 
into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and 
the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, 
is seen to be but a small atom in the awful vast- 
ness of the universe."" The whole position, in- 
deed, is reversed. The skies once seemed to pay 
the earth homage, and to serve it with light and 
shelter. Now they do nothing; so far as the imag- 
ination is concerned, but spurn and dwarf it. And 
when we come to the details of the earth's surface 
itself, the case is just the same. It, in its extent, 
has grown little and paltry to us. The wonder 
and the mystery has gone from it, A Cockney 
excursionist goes round it in a holiday trip ; there 
are no 

"Golden cities, ten months' jor.rnej 7 " deep, 
In far Tartarian wilds ;"f 

ncr do the confines of civilisation, melt as they 
once did, into any unknown and unexplored won 
derlands. And thus a large mass of sentiment 
that was once powerful in the world is now rapidly 
dwindling, and, so far as we can see ; there is no- 
thing that can ever exactly replaced. Patriotism, 



* Mr. Fronde, History of Ikvjland. chap. I 

Wordsworth. 



40 



Is Life Worth Living? 



for instance, can never again be the religion it was 
to Athens, or the pride it was to Rome. Men are 
not awed and moved as once they were by local 
and material splendors. The pride of life, it is 
true, is still eagerly coveted ; but by those at least 
who are most familiar with it, it is courted and 
sought for with a certain contempt and cynicism. 
It is treated like a courtesan, rather than like a 
goddess. Whilst as to the higher enthusiasm that 
was once excited by external things, the world in 
its present state could no more work itself up to 
this than a girl, after three seasons, could again go 
for dissipation to her dolls. She might look back 
to the time of dolls with regret. Sue micrht see 
that the interest they excited in her was, perhaps, 
far more pleasing than any she had found in love. 
But the dolls would never rival her lovers, none 
the less. And with man, and his aims and objects, 
the case is just the same. And we must remem- 
ber that to realise keenly the potency of a past 
ideal, is no indication that practically it will ever 
again be powerful. 

Briefly, then, the positive school of to-day we see 
thus far to be in this position. It has to make 
demands upon human life that were never made 
before ; and human life is, in many ways, less able 
than it ever was to answer to them. 

But this is not ail. There is a third matter yet 
left to consider — a third factor in the case, pecu- 
liar to the present crisis. That is the intense self- 



The New Import of the Question. 41 

consciousness that is now developed in the world, 
and which is something altogether new to it. 
During the last few generations man has been 
curiously changing. Much of his old spontaneity 
of action has gone from him. He has become 
a creature looking before and after ; and his na- 
tive hue of resolution has been sickled over by 
thought. We admit nothing now without ques- 
tion; we have learned to take to pieces all motives 
to actions. We not only know more than w^e have 
done before, but we are perpetually chewing the 
cud of our knowledge. Thus positive thought 
reduces all religions to ideals created by man ; 
and as such, not only admits that they have had 
vast influence, but teaches us also that we in the 
future must construct new ideals for ourselves. 
Only there will be this difference. We shall now 
know that they are ideals, we shall no longer mis- 
take them for objective facts. But our positive 
thinkers forget this. They forget that the ideals 
that w r ere once active in the world were active 
amongst people who -thought that they were more 
than ideals, and who very certainly did mistake 
them for facts; and they forget how different their 
position will be, as soon as their true nature is 
recognised. There is no example, so feir as I 
know, to be found in all history, of men having 
been stimulated or affected in any important way 
— none, at any rate, of their having been restrained 
or curbed — by a mere ideal that was known to 



12 



Is Life Worth Living f 



have no reality to correspond to it. A child is 
frightened when its nurse tells it that a black man 
will come down the chimney and take it away. 
The black man, it is true, is only an ideal ; and 
yet the child is affected. But it would cease to 
be affected the instant it knew this, 

As we go on with our inquiry these considera- 
tions will become plainer to us. But enough has 
even now been said to show how distinct the 
present position is from any that have gone before 
it, and how little the experience of the past is 
really fitted to reassure us. Greek and Roman 
hought was positive, in our sense of the word, 
mly in a very small degree. The thought of the 
other ancient empires was not positive at all. The 
oldest civilisation of which any record is left to us 
—the civilisation of Egypt— was based on a theism 
which, of all other theisms, most nearly approaches 
6ur& And the doctrine ol a future life was first 
learnt by "he Jew's from their masters during the 
Captivity. We search utterly in vain through 
history ibr any parallel to our own negations. 

I have spoken hitherto of these peoples only 
whose history more or less directly has affected 
ours. But there' is a vast portion of the human 
race with which, roughly speaking, our progress 
has had no connection ; and the religions of these 
races, which are now for the first time beginning 
(o be accurately studied, are constantly being ap- 
plied to in support of the positive doctrines. 



The New Import of cze Question. 43 



Thus it is urged by Mr. Leslie Stephen that "the 
briefest outline of the religious history of mankind 
shows that c?eeds which can count more adherents 
than Christianity, and have flourished through a 
longer period, have omitted all that makes the 
Christian doctrine of a future state valuable in the 
eyes of the supporters;" and Dr. Tyndall points 
with the same delighted confidence to the gospel 
of Buddhism, as one of " pure human ethics, di- 
vorced not only from Brahma and the Brahrainic 
Trinit}^, but even from the existence of God."* 
Many other such appeals are made to what are 
sometimes vaguely called " the multitudinous 
creeds of the East ;" but it is to Buddhism, in its 
various forms, that they would all seem to apply. 
Let us now consider the real result of them. Our 
positivists have appealed to Buddhism, and to 
Buddhism they shall certainly go. It is one of 
the vastest and most significant of all human facts. 
But its significance is somewhat difterent from 
what it is popularly supposed to be. 

That the Buddhist religion has had a wide hold 
on the world is true. Indeed, forty per cent, of 
the whole human race at this moment profess it 
Except the Judaic, it is the oldest of existing 
creeds ; and beyond all comparison it numbers 
most adherents. And it is quite true also that it 
does not, in its pure state, base its teaching on 
the belief in any personal God, or otfer as an end 

* Quoted by Dr. Tyndall from Professor Llackie. 



44 



Is Life Worth Living? 



of action any happiness in any immortal life. But 
it does not for this reason bear any real resem- 
blance to our modern Western positivism, nor 
give it any reason to be sanguine. On the con- 
trary, it is most absolutely opposed to it ; and its 
success is due to doctrines which Western posi- 
tivism most emphatically repudiates. In the first 
place, so far from being based on exact thought, 
Buddhism takes for its very foundation four great 
mysteries, that are explicitly beyond the reach 
either of proof or reason ; and of these the fore- 
most and most intelligible is the transmigration 
and renewal of the existence of the individual. 
It is by this mystical doctrine, and by this alone, 
that Buddhism gains a hold on the common heart 
of man. This is the great fulcrum of its lever. 
Then further — and this is more important still— 
whereas the doctrine of Western positivism is that 
human life is good, or may be made good ; and 
that in the possibility of the enjoyment of it con- 
sists the great stimulus to action ; the doctrine of 
Buddhism is that human life is evil, and that 
man's right aim is not to gratify, but to extinguish, 
Ms desire for it. Love, for instance, as I have 
said before, is by most Western positivists held 
to be a high blessing. Buddhism tells us we 
should avoid it "as though it were a pit of burning 
coals." The most influential positive writer in 
England""* has said : "I desire no future that will 



* George Eliot. 



The New Import of the Question. 45 



break the ties of the past." Buddhism says that 
we should desire no present that will create any 
ties for the future. The bo^innincr of the Budd- 
hist teaching is the intense misery of life ; ther 
reward of Buddhist holiness is to, at }ast, live no 
longer. If we die in our sins, we shall bo obliged 
to live again on the earth ; and it will not be r 
perhaps, till after many lives that the necessity 
for fresh births will be exhausted. But when Ave 
have attained perfection, the evil spell is broken ; 
and "then the wise man," it is said, "is extin- 
guished as this lamp." The highest life was one of 
seclusion and asceticism. The founder of Budd- 
hism was met, during his first preaching, with 
the objection that his system, if carried cut fully, 
would be the ruin and the extermination of hu- 
manity. And he did not deny the charge; but 
said that what his questioners called ruin, was in 
reality the highest good. 

It is then hard to conceive an appeal more sin- 
gularly infelicitous than that which our modem 
positivists make to Buddhism. It is the appeal 
of optimists to inveterate pessimists, and of exact 
thinkers to inveterate mystics. If the considera- 
tion of it tells us anything of importance, it tells 
us this — tha f by far the largest mass of mankind 
that has ever been united by a single creed has 
explicitly denied every chief point that our W est- 
era teachers assert. So far then from helping to 
close the question we are to deal with— the ques- 



46 



Is Life Worth Living? 



tion as to the positive worth of life — tlio testimony 
of Buddhism, if it be of any weight at all, can 
only go to convince us that the question is at once 
new and open — new, because it has never yet been 
asked -o fully ; and open t because in so far as it 
has been asked, nearly half mankind has repu- 
diated the answer that we are so desirous of divine? 
it. Mr. Leslie Stephen calls Buddhism u a stu- 
pendous fact/' and I quite agree with him that it 
is so ; but taken in connection with the present 
philosophy of Europe, it is hardly a fact to streng- 
then our confidence in the essential dignity of man, 
or the worth of man's life. 

In short, the more we consider the matter, and 
the more various the points from which we do so, 
the more plain will it become to us that the prob- 
lem the present age is confronted by is an alto- 
gether unanswered one ; and that the closest 
seeming parallels to be found amongst other times 
and races, have far less really* of parallelism in 
them than of contrast. The path of thought, as 
it were, has taken a sudden turn round a moun- 
tain ; and our bewildered eyes are staring on an 
undreamed-of prospect. The leaders of progress 
thus far have greeted the sight with acclamation, 
and have confidently declared that we are looking 
on the promised land. But to the more thought- 
ful, and to the less impulsive, it is plain that a 
mist hangs over it, and that we have no right to 
be sure whether it is the promised land or no. 



The Prize oj Life. 



£7 



They see grave reasons for making a closer scru- 
tiny, and for asking if, when the mist lifts, what 
we see will be not splendor, but desolation. 

Such, in brief outline, is the question we are to 
deal with. We will now go on to approach it in 
a more detailed way. 



CHAPTER, II. 

TEE PBIZE OF LIFE. 
" Tlve kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field 

HAVITs G thus seen broadly what is meant by 
that claim for life that we are about to ana- 
lyse, we must now examine it more minutely, as 
made by the positive school themselves. 

This will at once make evident one important 
point. The worth in question is closely bound 
up with what we call morality. In this respect 
our deniers of the supernatural claim to be on as 
firm a footing as the believers in it. They will 
not admit that the earnestness of life is lessened 
for them; or that they have opened any door 
either to levity or to licentiousness. It is truo 
indeed that it is allowed occasionally that the loss 
iSi <* fciitn m God, and of the life in a future, may. 



<3 



Is Life Worth Liviny? 



under certain circumstances, be a real less to us. 
Others again contend that this loss is a gain. 
Such views as these, however, are not much to 
the purpose. For those even, according to whom 
life has lost most in this way, do not consider the 
loss a very important, still less a fatal one. The 
qood is still to be an aim for us, and our devotion 
to it will be more valuable because it will be quite 
disinterested. Thus Dr. Tyndall informs us that 
though he has now rejected the religion of his 
earlier years, yet granting him proper health of 
body, there is "no spiritual experience," such as 
lie then knew, "no resolve of duty, no work of 
mercy, no act of self-renouncement, no solemnity 
of thought, no joy in the life and aspects ot nature, 
that would not still be" his. The same is the im- 
plicit teaching of all George Eliot's novels ; whilst 
Professor Huxley tells us that come what may to 
our "intellectual beliefs and even education," "'the 
beauty of holiness and the ugliness of sin" will 
remain for those that have eyes to see them, "no 
mere metaphors, but real and intense feelings." 
These are but a few examples, but the view of 
life they illustrate is so well known that these 
few will suffice. The point on which the modern 
pesitivist school is most vehement, is that it does 
not destroy, but that on the contrary it intensifies; 
the distinction between ricrlit and wronsj. 

And now let us consider what, according to all 
positive theories, this supremacy of morality 



The Prize of Life. 



49 



means. It means that there is a certain course 
of active life, and a certain course o\\\y, by which 
life can be made by everyone a beautiful and a 
noble tiling : and life is called earnest, because 
such a prize is within our reach, and solemn be- 
cause there is a risk that we may fail to reach it 
Were this not so, right and wrong could have no 
general and objective meaning. They would be 
purely personal matters — mere misleading names, 
in fact, for the private likes and the dislikes of 
each of us ; and to talk of right, and good, and 
morality, as things that we ought all to conform 
to, and to live by, would be simply to talk non- 
sense. What the very existence of a moral system 
implies is, that whatever may be our personal 
inclinations naturally, there is some common pat- 
tern to which they should be all adjusted ; the 
reason being that we shall so all become partakers 
in some common happiness, which is greater be- 
yond comparison than every other kind. 

Here we are presented with two obvious tasks 
the first, to inquire what this happiness is, what 
are the qualities and attractions generally ascribed 
to it ; the second, to analyse it, as it is thus held 
up to us, and to sec if its professed ingredients 
arc sufficient to make up the result. 

To proceed then, all moral systems must, as wo 
have just seen, postulate some end of action, an 
end to which morality is the only road. Further, 
this end is the one thing in life that is really worth 

H 



50 



Is Life Worth Living? 



attaining; and since we have to do with no life 
other than this one, it must be found amongst the 
days and years of which this short life is the aggre- 
gate. On the adequacy of this universal end 
depends the whole question of the positive worth 
of life, and the essential dignity of man. 

That this is at least one way of stating the case 
has been often acknowledged by the positive 
moralists themselves. The following passage, for 
instance, is from the autobiography of J. S. Mill. 
"From the winter of 1821/' he writes, "when I 
first read Bentham, ... I had what might truly 
be called ail object in life, to be a reformer of the 
world. ... I endeavored to pick up as many 
flowers as I could by the way ; but as a serious 
and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, 
my whole reliance was placed on this. . . . But 
the time came when I awakened from this as from 
a dream. ... It occurred to me to put the ques- 
tion directly to myself: 'Suppose that all your 
objects in life were realised ; that all the changes 
in institutions and opinions which you were look- 
ing forward to, could be completely effected in 
this very instant, would this be a very great joy 
and happiness to you V And an irrepressible 
self-consciousness distinctly answered ' No ! ' At 
this my heart sank within me : the whole founda- 
tion on which my life was constructed fell down. 
. . . The end had ceased to charm, and how could 
there ever again be any interest in the means ? 



The Prize of Life. 



51 



I seemed to have nothing left to live for. . . 
The lines in Coleridge's 'Dejection' exactly de 
scribe my case :— 

4 O grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, 
A dreary, stilled, un impassioned grief, 
Which finds no natural outlet nor relief 
In word, or sigh, or tear. 
• • • • • • 

W ork without hope draws nectar in a sieve, 
And life without an object cannot live. 5 " 

And the foregoing confession is made more signi- 
ficant by the author's subsequent comment on it. 
" Though my dejection," he says, " honestly looked 
at, could not be called other than egotistical, pro- 
duced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of 
happiness, yet the destiny of mankind was ever 
in my thoughts, and could not be separated from 
my own. I felt that the flaw in my life must be 
a flaw in life itself; and that the question was 
whether, if the reformers of society and govern- 
ment could succeed in their objects, and every 
person in the community were free, and in a state 
of physical comfort, the pleasures of life being no 
longer kept up by struggle and privation, would 
cease to be pleasures. And I felt that unless I 
could see some better hope than this for human 
happiness in general, my dejection must con- 
tinue." It is true that in Mill's case the dejection 
did not continue ; and that in certain ways at 
which it is not yet time to touch, he succeeded, 
to his own satisfaction, in finding the end he was 



Is Life Worth Living t 



thus asking for, I only quote him to show how 
necessary he considered such an end to be. He 
acknowledged the fact, not only theoretically, or 
with his lips, but by months of misery, by inter- 
mittent thoughts of suicide, and by years of re- 
curring melancholy. Some ultimate end of action, 
some kind of satisfying happiness — this, and this 
alone, he felt, could give any meaning to work, or 
make possible any kind of virtue. And a yet 
later authority has told us precisely the same 
thing. He lias told us that the one great ques- 
tion that education is of value for answering, is 
this very question that was so earnestly asked 
by Mill. " The ultimate end of education," says 
Professor Huxley, "is to promote morality and 
refinement, by teaching men to discipline them- 
selves, and by leading them to see that the highest, 
as it is the only content, is to be attained not by 
grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of 
sense, but by continually striving towards those 
high peaks, where, resting in eternal calm, reason 
discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the 
highest good — 'a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by 
night.' " And these words are an excellent speci- 
men of the general moral exhortations of the new 
school. 

Kow all this is very well as far as it goes ; and 
were there not one thing lacking, it would be just 
the answer that we are at present so anxious to 
elicit. But the one thing lacking, is enough to 



The Prize of Life. 



53 



make it valueless. It may mean a great deal ; 
but there is no possibility of saying exactly "what 
it means. Before we can beinn to strive towards 
the " highest good/' we must know something of 
what this " highest srood " is. W e must make this 
€ \ higher ideal " stand and unfold itself. If it can- 
not be made to do this, if it vanishes into mist as 
we near it, and takes a different shape to each of 
us as we recede from it ; still more, if only some 
can see it, and to others it is quite invisible— then 
we must simply set it down as an illusion, and 
waste no more time in pursuit of it. But that it 
is not an illusion is the great positivist claim for it 
Heaven and the love of God, we are told, were 
illusions. This "highest good" we are offered, 
stands out in clear contradistinction to these. It 
is an actual attainable thing, a thing for flesh and 
blood creatures; it is to be won and enjoyed by 
them in their common daily life. It is, as its 
prophets distinctly and unanimously tell us, some 
form of happiness that results in this life to us, 
from certain conduct , it is a thing essentially for 
the present ; and " it is obviously," says Professor 
Huxley, "in no way affected by abbreviation or 
prolongation of our conscious life." 

This being the case, it is clearly not unreason- 
able to demand some explicit account of it; or if 
no sound account of it be extant, to inquire dili- 
gently what sort of account of it is possible. 
And let it be remembered that to make this de- 



54 



IS Lift itortfi Living? 



mancl is in no way to violate the great rule of 
Aristotle, and to demand a greater accuracy than 
the nature of the subject will admit of. The 
"highest good/' it is quite possible, may be a 
vague thing ; not capable, like a figure in Euclid, 
of being defined exactly. But many vague things 
can be described exactly enough for all practical 
purposes. They can be described so that we at 
once know what is meant, and so that we can at 
once find and recognise them. Feelings, charac- 
ters, and personal appearance are things of this 
sort ; so too is the taste of food, the style of fur- 
niture, or the general tone and tenor of our life, 
under various circumstances. And the "good" 
we are now considering can surely be not less 
describable than these. When therefore our 
exact thinkers speak to us about the highest 
happiness, we want to know what meaning they 
attach to the words. Has Professor Huxley, for 
instance, ever enjoyed it himself, or does he ever 
hope to do so ? If so, when, where, and how ? 
What must be done to get it, and what must bo 
left undone ? And when it is got, what will it bo 
like? Is it something brief, rapturous, and inter- 
mittent, as the language often used about it might 
seem to suggest to one ? Is it known only in 
brief moments ot Neoplatonic ecstasy, to which 
all the acts of lite should be stepping stones ? It 
certainly cannot be that. Our exact thinkers aro 
essentially no mystics, and the highest happiness 



The Prize of Life. 



55 



must bo something far more solid than transcen- 
dental ecstasies. Surely, therefore, if it exists at 
all we must be able somewhere to lay our hands 
upon it. It is a pillar of fire by night ; surely then 
it will be visible. It is to be lifted up, and is to 
draw all men unto it. It is nothing if not this : 
and we shall see more clearly if we consider the 
matter further. 

This chief good, or this highest happiness, being 
the end of moral action, one point about it is at 
once evident. Its value is of course recognised 
by those who practise morality, or who enunciate 
moral systems. Virtuous men are virtuous be- 
cause the end gained by virtue is an end that they 
desire to gain. But this is not enough ; it is not 
enough that to men who are already seeking the 
good the good should appear in all its full attrac- 
tiveness. It must be capable of being made at- 
tractive for those who do not know it, and who 
have never sought it, but who have, on the con- 
trary, always turned away from everything that is 
supposed to lead to it. It must be able, in other 
words, not only to satisfy the virtuous of the wis- 
dom of their virtue, it must be able to convince 
the vicious of the folly of their vice. Vice is only 
bad in the eye of the positive moralist because of 
the precious something that we are at the present 
moment losing by it. He can only convince us 
of our error by giving us some picture of our loss. 
And he must be able to do this, if his system is 



58 



Is Life Worth Living? 



worth anything ; and in promulgating his system 
he professes that he can do it. The physician's 
work is to heal the sick ; his skill must not end in 
explaining his own health. It is clear that if a 
morality is incapable of being preached, it is use- 
less to say that it is worthy of being practised. 
The statement will be meaningless, except to those 
for whom it is superfluous. It is therefore essen- 
tial to the moral end that in some way or other it 
be generally presentable, so that its excellence 
shall appeal to some common sense in man. And 
again, be it observed, that we are demanding no 
mathematical accuracy. "We demand only that 
the presentation shall be accurate enough to let 
us recognise its corresponding fact, in life. 

Now what is a code of morals, and why has the 
world any need of one ? A code of morals is a 
number of restraining orders ; it rigorously bids 
us walk in certain paths. But why? What is 
the use of bidding us ? Because there are a nuxn- 
ber of other paths that we are naturally inclined 
to walk in. The right path is right because it 
leads to the highest kind of happiness ; the wrong 
paths are wrong because they lead to lower kinds 
oi happiness. But when men choose vice instead 
ol virtue, what is happening ? They are consider- 
ing the lower or the lesser happiness better than 
the greater or the higher. It is this mistake that 
is the essence and cause of immorality ; it is this 
mistake that mankind is ever inclined to make. 



The Prize of Life. 



57 



and it is only because of this inclination that any 
moral system is of any general value. 

Were we all naturally inclined to morality, tho 
analysis of it, it is true, might have great specula- 
tive interest ; but a moral system would not bo 
needed as it is for a great practical purpose. The 
lav/, as we all know, has arisen because of trans- 
gressions, and the moralist has to meddle with 
human nature mainly because it is inconstent and 
corrupted. It is a wild horse that has not so 
much to be broken, once for all, as to be driven 
and reined in perpetually. And the art of the 
moralist is, by opening the minds eye to the true 
end of life, to make us sharply conscious of what 
we lose by losing it. And the men to whom we 
shall chiefly want to present this end are not men, 
let us remember, who desire to see it, or who will 
seek for it of their own accord, but men who are 
turned away from it, and on whose sight it must 
be thrust. It is not the righteous but the sinners 
that have to be called to repentance. And not 
this only : not only must the end in question be 
thus presentable, but when presented it must be 
able to stand the inveterate criticism of those who 
fear being allured by it, who are content as they 
are, and have no wish to be made discontented. 
These men will submit it to every test by which 
they may hope to prove that its attractions are 
delusive. They will test it with reason, as wo 
test a metal by an acid. They will ask what it is 



58 Is Life Wortk Living? 



based upon, and of what it is compounded. They 
will submit it to an analysis as merciless as that 
by which their advisers have dissolved theism. 

Here then is a fact that all positive morality 
pre-supposes. It pre-supposes that life by its 
very nature contains the possibility in it of some 
one kind of happiness, which is open to all men, 
and which is better than all others. It is suffici- 
ently presentable even to those who have not ex- 
perienced it; and its excellence is not vaguely 
apparent only, but can be exactly proved from 
obvious and acknowledged facts. Further, this 
happiness must be removed from its alternatives 
by some very great interval. The proudest, the 
serenest, the most successful life of vice, must be 
miserable when compared with the most painful 
life of virtue, and miserable in a very high degree; 
for morality is momentous exactly in proportion 
to the interval between the things to be gained 
and escaped by it. And unless this interval be a 
very profound one, the language at present cur- 
rent as to the importance of virtue, the dignity of 
life, and the earnestness of the moral struggle, 
will be altogether overstrained and ludicrous. 

Now is such happiness a reality or is it a myth ? 
That is the great question. Can human life, cut 
off utterly from every hope beyond itself — can 
human life supply it ? If it cannot, then evident- 
ly there can be no morality without religion. 
But perhaps it can. Perhaps Ike has greater 



The Prize of Life. 



59 



capacities than we have hitherto given it credit 
for. Perhaps this happiness may be really close 
at hand for each of us, and we have only over- 
looked it hitherto because it was too directly 
before our eyes. At all events, wherever it is let 
it be pointed out to us. It is useless, as we have 
seen, if not generally presentable. To those 
who most need it, it is useless until presented. 
Indeed, until it is presented we are but acting on 
the maxim of its advocates by refusing to believe 
in its existence. " No simplicity of mind, " says 
Professor Clifford, " no obscurity of station, can 
escape the universal duty of questioning all that 
we believe. " 

The question, then, that we want answered has 
by this time, I think, been stated with sufrcient 
clearness, and its importance and its legitimacy 
been placed beyond a doubt. I shall now" : ^o on 
to explain in detail how conrp A e^ely unsatisfactory 
are the answers that are at present given it ; how 
it is evaded by some and begged by others ; and 
how those that are most plausible are really made 
worthless, by a subtle but profound defect. 

These answers divide themselves into two 
classes, which, though invariably confused by 
those that give them, are in reality quite distinct 
and separable. Professor Huxley, one of the most 
vigorous of our positive thinkers, shall help us to 
understand these. He is going to tell us, let us 
remember, about the " highest good '—the happi- 



60 



Is Life Worth Living? 



ness, in other words, that we have just been dis- 
cussing — the secret of our life's worth, and the 
test of all our conduct. This happiness he divides 
into two kinds." He says that there are two things 
that we may mean when we speak about it. We 
may mean the happiness of a society of men, or 
we may mean the happiness of the members of 
that society. And when we speak of morality, 
we may mean two things also ; and these two 
things must be kept distinct. We may mean what 
Professor Huxley calls " social morality/' and of 
this the test and object is the happiness of socie- 
ties ; or we may mean what he calls " personal 
morality/ 5 and of this the test and object is the 
happiness of individuals. And the answers which 
our positive moralists make to us divide them- 
selves into two classes, according to the sort of 
happiness they refer to. 

It is before all things important that this division 
be understood, and be kept quite clear in our 
minds, if we would see honestly what our positive 
modern systems amount to. For what makes 
them at present so very hard to deal with, is the 
fact that their exponents are perpetually perplex- 
ing themselves between these two classes of 
answers, first giving one, and then the other, and 
imagining that, by a kind of confusion of sub- 
stance, they can both afurd solutions of the same 
questions. Thus they continually speak of life 



* Vide Nineteenth < .duvy, Ko. 3, pp. 535, 537. 



The Prize of Life. 



61 



as though its crowning achievement were some 
kind of personal happiness ; and then being asked 
to explain the nature and basis of this, they at 
once shift their ground, and talk to us of the laws 
and conditions of social happiness. Professor 
Huxley will again supply us with a very excellent 
example. He starts with the thesis that both sorts 
of morality are strong enough to hold their own, 
without supernatural aid ; and when we look to 
see on what ground he holds they are, we find it 
to consist in the following explanation that one is. 
"Given," he says, "a society of human beings 
under certain circumstances, and the question 
whether a particular action on the part of one of 
its members will tend to increase the general hap- 
piness or not, is a question of natural knowledge, 
and as such is a perfectly legitimate subject of 
scientific inquiry. . . If it can be shown by ob- 
servation or experiment, that theft, murder, and 
adultery do not tend to diminish the happiness of 
society, then, in the absence of any but natural 
knowledge, they are not social immoralities." 

Now, in the above passage we have at least one 
thing. We have a short epitome of one of those 
classes of answers that our positive moralists are 
offering us. It is with this class that I shall deal 
in the following chapter ; and point out as briefly 
as may be its complete irrelevance. After that, I 
shall go on to the other. 



62 



75 Life Worth Living? 



CHAPTER III. 

SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 

QOCIETY, says Professor Clifford, is the highest 
of all organisms and its organic nature, ho 
tells us, is one of those great facts which our own 
generation has been the first to state rationally. 
It is our understanding of this that enables us to 
supply morals with a positive basis. It is, he pro- 
ceeds, because society is organic, "that actions 
which, as individual, are insignificant, are massed 
together into . . . important movements. Co- 
operation or band-work is the life of it." And 
41 it is the practice of band-work," he adds, that, 
unknown till lately though its nature was to us, 
has so moulded man as "to create in him two 
specially human faculties, the conscience and the 
intellect ;" of which the former, we are told, gives 
us the desire for the good, and the latter instructs 
us how to attain this desire by action. So too 
Professor Huxley, once more to recur to him, 
says that that state of man would be " a true del- 
tas Dei, in which each man's moral faculty shall 
be such as leads him to control all those desires 
which run counter to the good of mankind." And 
J. S. Mill, whose doubts as to the value of life we 



Vide Nineteenth Century, October, 1S77. 



Sociology as the Foundation oj Morality. G3 



have already dwelt upon, professed to have at last 
satisfied himself by a precisely similar answer. 
He had never "wavered in the conviction/' he 
tells us, even all through his perplexity, that, it 
life had any value at all, " happiness " was its one 
"end," and the " test of its rule of conduct but 
he now thought that this end was to be attained 
by not making it the direct end, but " by fixing 
the mind on some object other than one's own 
happiness ; on the happiness of others — on the 
improvement of mankind." The same thing is 
being told us on all sides, and in countless ways. 
The common name for this theory is Utilitarian- 
ism ; and its great boast, and its special professed 
strength, is that it gives morals a positive basis in 
the acknowledged science of sociology. Whether 
sociology can really supply such a basis is what 
we now have to inquire. There are many practi- 
cal rules for which it no doubt can do so ; but will 
these rules correspond with what we mean by 
morals ? 

Now the province of the sociologist, within cer- 
tain limits, is clear enough. His study is to the 
social body what the study of the physician is to 
the individual body. It is the study of human 
action as productive, or non-productive, of some 
certain general good. But here comes the point 
at issue— What is this gener l good, and what is 
included by it ? The positive school contend that 
it is general happiness ; and there, they say, is the 



64 



Is Life Worth Living? 



answer to the great question — What is the test of 
conduct, and the true end of life ? Bat though, 
as we shall see in another moment, there is some 
plausibility in this, there is really nothing in it of 
the special answer we want. Our question is, 
What is the true happiness ? And what is the 
answer thus far ? — That the true happiness is 
general happiness ; that it is the happiness of men 
in societies ; that it is happiness equally distrib- 
uted. But this avails us nothing. The coveted 
happiness is still a locked casket. We know noth- 
ing as yet of its contents. A happy society neither 
does nor can mean anything but a number of happy 
individuals, so organised that their individual 
happiness is secured to them. But what do the 
individuals want ? Before we can try to secure it 
for them, we must know that. Granted that we 
know what will make the individuals happy, then 
we shall know what will make society happy. 
And then social morality will be, as Professor 
Huxley says, a perfectly legitimate subject of 
scientific inquiry — then, but not till then. But 
this is what the positive school are perpetually 
losing sight of; and the reason of the confusion is 
not far to seek. 

Within certain limits, it is quite true, the gen- 
eral good is a sufficiently obvious matter, and 
beyond the reach of any rational dispute. There 
are, therefore, certain rules with regard to con- 
duct that w^e can arrive at and justify by strictly 



Snmauvjy as the Foundation 



scientific methods.. We can demonstrate that 
there are certain actions which we must never 
tolerate, and which we must join together, as best 
we may, to suppress. Actions, for instance, that 
would tend to generate pestilence, or to destroy 
our good faith in our fellows, or to render our 
lives and property insecure, are actions the bad- 
ness of which can be scientifically verified. 

But the general good by which these actions are 
tested is something quite distinct from happiness, 
though it undoubtedly has a close connection with 
it. It is no kind of happiness, high or low, in 
particular; it is simply those negative conditions 
required equally by every kind. If we are to be 
happy in any way, no matter what, we must of 
course have our lives, and, next to our lives, our 
health and our possessions secured to us. But to 
secure us these docs not secure us happiness. It 
simply leaves us free to secure it, if we can, for 
ourselves. Once let us have some common agres- 
ment as to what this happiness is, we may then 
be able to formulate other rules for attaining: it. 
But in the absence of any such agreement, the 
only possible aim of social morality, the only pos- 
sible meaning of the general good, is not any kind 
or any kinds of happiness, but the security of those 
conditions without which all happiness would bo 
impossible. 

Suppose the human race were a set of canaries 
in a cage, and that we were in grave doubt a3 to 

4 



66 



Is Life Worth Living? 



what seed to give them — hemp-seed, rape-seed, 01 
canary-seed, or all three mixed in certain propor 
tions. That would exactly represent the state of 
our case thus far. There is the question that wo 
want the positive school to answer. It is surely 
evident that, in this perplexity, it is beside the 
point to tell us that the birds must not peck each 
other's eyes out, and that they must all have access 
to the trough that we are ignorant how to fill. 

The fault then, so continually committed by 
the positive school, is this. They confuse the 
negative conditions of happiness with the positive 
materials of it. Professor Huxley, in a passage 
I have already quoted, is caught, so to speak, in 
the very act of committing it. " Theft, murder, 
and adultery/' all these three, it will be remem- 
bered, he classes together, and seems to think 
that they stand upon the same footing. But from 
what has just been pointed out, it is plain that 
they do not do so. We condemn theft and murdei 
for one reason. We condemn adultery for quite 
another. We condemn the former because they 
are incompatible with any form of happiness. 
We condemn the latter because it is the supposed 
destruction of one particular form ; or the substi- 
tution, rather, of a form supposed to be less com- 
plete, for another form supposed to be more com- 
plete. If the " highest good," if the best kind of 
happiness, be the end we are in search of, the 
truths of sociology will help us but a very short 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 67 



way towards it. By the practice of " band-work " 
alone we shall never learn to construct a " true 
Civitas Dei." Band-work with the same perfec- 
tion may be practised for opposite ends. Send an 
army in a just war or an unjust one, in either case 
it will need the same discipline. There must be 
order amongst thieves, as well as amongst honest 
men. There can be an orderly brothel as well as 
an orderly nunnery, and all order rests on co- 
operation. We presume co-operation. We re- 
quire an end for which to co-operate. 

I have already compared the science of socio- 
logy to that of medicine ; and the comparison will 
again be a very instructive one. The aim of both 
sciences is to produce health ; and the relation of 
health to happiness is in both cases the same. It 
is an important condition of the full enjoyment ot 
anything : but it will by no means of itself give or 
guide us to the best thing. A man may be in ex 
cellent health, and yet, if he be prudent, be lead- 
ing a degrading life. So, too, may a society. 
The Cities of the Plain may, for all we know to 
the contrary, hare been in excellent social health ; 
indeed, there is every reason to believe they were. 
They were, apparently, to a high degree strong 
and prosperous; and the sort of happiness that 
their citizens set most store by was only too gen- 
erally attainable. There were not ten men to be 
found in them by whom the highest good had not 
been realised. 



3S Is Life Worth Living? 

There are, however, two suppositions, on which 
the general good, or the health of the social 
organism, can be given a more definite meaning, 
and made in some sense an adequate test of con- 
duct. And one or other of these suppositions is 
apparently always lurking in the positivist mind. 
But though, when unexpressed, and only barely 
assented to, they may seem to be true, their entire 
falsehood will appear the moment they are dis- 
tinctly stated. 

One of these suppositions is, that for human 
happiness health is alone requisite — health in the 
social organism including sufficient wealth and 
freedom ; and that mans life, whenever it is not 
interfered with, will be moral, dignified, and 
delightful naturally, no matter how he lives it. 
But this supposition, from a moralist, is of course 
nonsense. For, were it true, as we have just seen, 
Sodom mirfit have been as moral as the tents of 
Abraham ; and in a perfect state there would be 
a fitting place for both. The social organism 
indeed, in its highest state of perfection, would 
manifest the richest variety in the development 
of such various parts. It might consist of a num- 
ber of motley communes'" of monogamists and of 

* "As Mr. Spencer points out, society does not resemble those organisms 
which are so highly centralised that the unity of the whole is the impor- 
tant thing, and every part must die if separated from the rest : but rather 
those that will bear separation and reunion : because, although there is a* 
certain union and organisation of the parts in regard to one another, yet the 
far more important faco is the life of tne parts separately. Tne true health 



Socio! ojy as the Foundation of Morality. GO 



free-lovers, of ascetics and sybarites, of saints and 
ircuScpaorat — each of them being stones in this true 
deltas Dei, this holy city of God. Of course it 
may be contended that this state of things would 
be desirable ; that, however, is quite a different 
question. But whatever else it was, it would cer- 
tainly not be moral, in any sense in which the 
word has yet been used. 

The second supposition I spoke of, though less 
openly absurd than this one, is really quite as false. 
It consists of a vague idea that, for some reason 
or other, happiness can never be distributed in an 
equal measure to all, unless it be not only equal 
in degree but also the same in kind ; and that the 
one kind that can be thus distributed is a kind 
that is in harmony with our conceptions of moral 
excellence. Now this is indeed so far true, that 
there are doubtless certain kinds of happiness 
which, if enjoyed at all, can be enjoyed by the 
few alone ; and that the conditions under which 
alone the few can enjoy them disturb the con- 
ditions of all happiness for the many. The gen- 
eral good, therefore, gives us at once a test by 
which such kinds of happiness can be condemned. 
But to eliminate these will by no means leave us 
a residue of virtue ; for these, so far from being 

of society depends upon the communes, the villages and townships, infinitely 
snore than on the form and pageantry of an imperial government. If ;a 
them there is hand-work, union for a common effort, converse in the work- 
ing out of a common thought, there the .Republic is." — i/noi s^SOli Cliwoud, 
Atuicbrnt/i Cc/Uurj, G closer, 



70 



Is Life Worth Living? 



co-extensive with moral evil, do in reality lie only 
on the borders of it; and the condemnation 
attached to them is a legal rather than a moral 
one. It is based, that is, not so much on the kind 
of happiness itself as on the circumstances under 
which we are at present obliged to seek it. Thus 
the practice of seduction may be said to be con- 
demned sufficiently by the misery brought by it to 
its victims, and its victims' families. But suppose 
the victims are willing, and the families complac- 
ent, this ground of condemnation goes ; though in 
the eye of the moralist, matters in this last will 
be far worse than in the former. It is therefore 
quite a mistake to say that the kind of happiness 
which it is the end of life to realise is defined or 
narrowed down appreciably by the fact that it is 
a general end. Vice can be enjoyed in common, 
just as well as virtue ; nor if wisely regulated will 
it exhaust the tastes that it appeals to. Regu- 
lated with equal skill, and with equal far-sight- 
edness, it will take its place side by side with 
virtue ; nor will sociology or social morality give 
us any reason for preferring the one to the other. 

We may observe accordingly, that if happiness 
of some certain kind be the moral test, what Pro- 
fessor Huxley calls " social morality " — the rule 
that is, for producing the negative conditions of 
happiness, it is not in itself morality at all. It 
may indeed become so, when the consciousness 
that we are conforming to it becomes one of the 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 71 



factors of our own personal happiness. It then 
suffers a kind of apotheosis. It is taken up 
into ourselves, and becomes part and parcel of 
our own personal morality. But it then becomes 
quite a different matter, as we shall see very 
shortly ; and even then it supplies us with but a 
very small part of the answer. 

Thus far what has been made plain is this. 
General, or social happiness, unless explained 
farther, is simply for moral purposes an unmean- 
ing phrase. It evades the whole question we are 
asking; for happiness is no more differentiated by 
saying that it is general, than food is by saying 
that everyone at a table is eating it ; or than a 
language is by saying that everyone in a room is 
talking it. The social happiness of all of us means 
nothing but the personal happiness of each of us; 
and if social happiness have any single meaning 
—in other words, if it be a test of morals — it must 
postulate a personal kappiner* of some hitherto 
unexplained kind. Else sociology will be subsid- 
ary to nothing but individual license ; general law 
will be but the protection of individual lawless- 
ness ; and the completest social morality but the 
condition of the completest personal un-morality. 
The social organism we may compare to a yew 
tree. Science will explain to us how it has grown 
up from the ground, and how all its twigs must 
have fitting room to expand in. It will not show 
us how to clip the yew-tree into a peacock. Mor- 



72 



Ts Life Worth Limno f 



ality, it is true, must rest ultimately on the proved 
facts of sociology ; and this is not only true but 
evident. But it rests upon them as a statue restr 
upon its pedestal, and the same pedestal will sup 
port an Athene or a Priapus. 

The matter, however, is not yet altogether dis 
posed of. The type of personal happiness that 
social morality postulates, as a whole, we havo 
still to seek for. But a part of it, as I just pointed 
out, will, beyond doubt, be a ivilling obedience by 
each to the rules that make it in its entirety within 
the reach of all. About this obedience, however, 
there is a certain thing to remember : it must be 
willing, not enforced. The laws will of course do 
all they can to enforce it ; but not only can they 
never do this completely, but even if they could, 
they would not produce morality. Conduct which, 
if willing, we should call highly moral, Ave shall, 
if enforced or y, call nothing more than legal 
We do not cah a wild bear tame because it is so 
well ca<zed that there is no fear of its attacking 
us ; nor do we call a man good because, though 
his desires are evil, we have made him afraid to 
gratify them. Further, it is not enough that the 
obedience in question be willing in the sense that 
it does not give us pain. If it is to be a moral 
quality, it must also give us positive pleasure. 
Indeed, it must not so much be obedience to the 
law as an impassioned co-operation with it. 

Xow this, if producible, even though no further 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 73 



.moral aim was connected with it, would undoubt- 
edly be of itself a moral element. Suppose two 
pigs, for instance, had only a single wallowing- 
place, and each would like naturally to wallow in 
it for ever. If each pig in turn were to rejoice to 
make room for his brother, and were consciously 
to regulate his delight in becoming filthy himself 
by an equal delight in seeing his brother becoming 
filthy also, we should doubtless here be in the 
presence of a certain mora! element. And though 
this, in a human society, might not carry us so far 
as we require to be carried, it would, without 
doubt, if producible, carry us a certain way. The 
question is, Is this moral element, this impassioned 
and unselfish co-operation with the social law, 
producible, in the absenca of any farther end to 
which the social law is to be subordinate ? The 
positive school apparently think it is ; and this 
opinion has a seeming foundation in fact. We 
will therefore carefully examine what this foun- 
dation is, and see how for it is really able to sup- 
port the weight that is laid upon it. 

That fact, in itself a quite undoubted one, is 
the possession by man of a certain special and 
important feeling, which, viewed from its passive 
side, we call sympathy, and from its active side, 
benevolence. It exists in various degrees m dif- 
ferent people, but to some degree or other it prob- 
ably exists in all Most people, for instance, if 
they hear an amusing story, at once itch to tell it 



74 



Is Life Worth Living? 



to an appreciative friend ; for they find that the 
amusement, if shared, is doubled. Two epicures 
together, for the same reason, will enjoy a dinner 
better than if they each dined singly. In such 
cases the enjoyment of another plays the part of 
a reflector, which throws one's own enjoyment 
back on one. Nor is this all. It is not only true 
that we often desire others to be pleased with us, 
we often desire others to be pleased instead of us. 
For instance, if there be but one easy chair in a 
room, one man will often give it up to another, 
and prefer himself to stand, or perhaps sit on the 
table. To contemplate discomfort is often more 
anno)'ing than to suffer it. 

This is the fact in human nature on which the 
positive school rely for their practical motive 
power. It is this sympathy and benevolence that 
is the secret of the social union ; and it is by these 
that the rules of social morality are to be absorbed 
and attracted into ourselves, and made the direc- 
tors of all our other impulses. 

The feelings, however, that are thus relied on 
will be found, on consideration, to be altogether 
•inadequate. They are undoubted facts, it is true, 
and are ours by the very constitution of our nature; 
but they do not possess the importance that is as- 
signed to them, and their limits are soon reached. 
They are unequal in their distribution ; they are 
partial and capricious in their action ; and they 
are disturbed and counterbalanced by the opposite 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 75 



impulse of selfishness, which is just as much a 
part of our nature, and which is just as generally 
distributed. It must be a very one-sided view of 
the case that will lead us to deny this ; and by 
such eclectic methods of observation we can sup- 
port any theory we please. Thus there are many 
stories of unselfish heroism displayed by rough 
men on occasions such as shipwrecks, and dis- 
played quite spontaneously. And did we confine 
our attention to this single set of examples, we 
might naturally conclude that we had here the 
real nature of man bursting forth in all its intense 
entirety— a constant but suppressed force, which 
we shall learn by-and-by to utilise generally. But 
if we extend our observations a little farther, we 
shall find another set of examples, in which self- 
ishness is just as predominant as unselfishness 
was in the first set. The sailor, for instance, who 
might struggle to save a woman on a sinking ship, 
will trample her to death to escape from a burn- 
ing theatre. And if we will but honestly estimate 
the composite nature of man, we shall find that 
the sailor, in this latter case, embodies a tendency 
far commoner, and far more to be counted on, 
than he does in the former. No fair student of 
life or history will, I think, be able to deny this. 
The lives of the world's greatest men, be they 
Goethes or Napoleons, will be the first to show 
us that it is so. Whilst the worlds best men, who 
have been most successful in conquering their 



76 



Is Life Worth Living? 



selfish nature, will be tlie first to bear witness to 
the persistent strength of it. 

But even giving these unpromising facts the 
least weight possible, the case will practically be 
not much mended. The unselfish impulses, let 
them be diffused never so widely, will be found, 
as a general rule, to bo very limited in power; 
and to be intense only for short periods, and under 
exceptional circumstances. They are intense only 
—in the absence of any further motive — when the 
thing to be won for another becomes invested for 
the moment with an abnormal value, and the thing 
to be lost by oneself becomes abnormally depreci- 
ated ; when all intermediate possibilities are sud- 
denly swept away from us, and the only surviving 
alternatives are shame and heroism. But this 
never happens, except in the case of great catas- 
trophes, of such, for instance, *r< a shipwreck; 
and thus the only conditions under which an im- 
passioned unselfishness can be counted on, are 
amongst the first conditions that we trust to pro- 
gress to eliminate. The common state of life, 
then, when the feelings are in this normal state of 
tension, is all that in this connection we can really 
be concerned in dealing with. And there, unself- 
ishness, though as sure a fact as selfishness, is, 
spontaneously and apart from a further motive, 
essentially unequal to the work it is asked to do. 
Thus, though as I observed just now, a man may 
often prefer to sit on a tabla and give up the arm- 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 77 

chair to a friend, there are other times when he 
will be very loth to do so. He will do so when 
the pleasure of looking at comfort is greater than 
the pleasure of feeling it. And in certain states 
of mind and body this is very often the case. But 
let him be sleepy and really in need of rest, the self- 
ish impulse will at once eclipse the unselfish, and, 
unless under the action of some alien motive, he 
will keep the arm-chair for himself. So, too, in 
the case of the two epicures, if there be sufficient 
of the best dainties for both, each will feel that it 
is so much the better. But whenever the dain- 
ties in question cannot be divided, it will be the 
tendency of each to take them furtively for himself. 

And when we come to the conditions of happi- 
ness the matter will be just the same. If without 
incommoding ourselves we can, as Professor Hun- 
ley says, repress "all those desires which run 
counter to the good of mankind," we shall no 
doubt all willingly do so ; only in that case little 
more need be said. The " Civitas Dei" we are 
promised may be left to take care of itself, and it 
will doubtless very soon begin "to rise like an 
exhalation." But if this self-repression be a mat- 
ter of great difficulty, and one requiring a constant 
struggle on our part, it will be needful for us to 
intensely realise, when we abstain from any action 
that the happiness it would take from others will 
be far greater than the happiness it would give to 
ourselves. Suppose, for instance, a man were in 



78 



Is Life Worth Living? 



love with his friend's wife, and had engaged on a 
certain nicjht to take her to the theatre. He 
would instantly give the engagement up could he 
know that the people in the gallery would be 
burnt to death if he did not. He would certainly 
not give it up because by the sight of his proceed- 
ings the moral tone of the stalls miqiit be infini- 
tesimally lowered ; still less would he do so be- 
cause another wife's husband might be made in- 
finitely jealous. Whenever we give up any source 
of personal happiness for the sake of the happi- 
ness of the community at large, the two kinds of 
happiness have to be weighed together in a balance. 
But the latter, except in very few cases, is at a 
great disadvantage : only a part of it, so to speak, 
can be got into the scale. What adds to my sense 
of pleasure in the proportion of a million pounds 
may be only taxing society in the proportion of 
half a farthing a head. Unselfishness with regard 
to society is thus essentially a different thing from 
unselfishness with regard to an individual. In 
the latter case the things to be weighed together 
.are commensurate : not so is the former. In the 
latter case, as we have seen, an impassioned self- 
devotion may be at times produced by the sudden 
presentation to a man of two extreme alterna- 
tives ; but in the former case such alternatives 
are not presentable. I may know that a certain 
line of conduct will on the one hand give me great 
pleasure, and that on the others hand, if it were 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 79 



practised by everyone, it would produce much 
general mischief; but I shall know that my prac- 
tising it, will, as a fact, be hardly felt at all by the 
community, or at all events only in a very small 
degree. And therefore my choice is not that of 
the sailor's in the shipwreck. It does not lie 
between saving my life at the expense of a wo- 
man's, or saving a woman's life at the expense of 
mine. It lies rather, as it were, between letting 
her lose her ear-ring and breaking my own arm. 

It will appear, therefore, that the general con- 
ditions of an entirely undefined happiness form an 
ideal utterly unfitted to counterbalance individual 
temptation or to give even willingness, let alone 
ardor, to the self-denials that are required of us. 
In the first place the conditions are so vague that 
oven in the extremest cases the individual will 
find it difficult to realise that he is appreciably 
disturbing them. And in the second place, until 
he knows that the happiness in question is some- 
thing of extreme value he will be unable to feel 
much ardor in helping to make it possible. If 
we knew that the social organism in its state of 
completest health had no higher pleasure than 
sleep and eating, the cause of its completest health 
would hardly excite enthusiasm. And even if 
we did not rebel against any sacrifices for so poor 
a result as this, we should at the best be resigned 
rather than blest in making them. The nearest 
approach to a moral end that the science of socio- 



so 



Is Life Worth Living? 



logy will of itself supply to us is an end that, in all 
probability, men will not follow at all, or that will 
produce in them, if they do, no happier state than 
a passionless and passive acquiescence. If Ave 
want anything more than this Ave must deal with 
happiness itself, not Avith the negative conditions 
of it. We must discern the highest good that is 
within the reach of each of us, and this may per- 
haps supply us -with a motive for endeavoring to 
secure the same blessing for all. But the matter 
depends entirely on what this highest good is — 
on the end to which, given the social health, the 
social health Avill be directed. 

The real answer to this question can be given, 
as I have said before, in terms of the individual 
only. Social happiness is a mere set of ciphers 
till the unit of personal happiness is placed before 
it. A man's happiness may of course depend on 
other beings, but still it is none the less contained 
in himself. If our greatest delight were to see 
each other dance the can-can, then it might be 
morality for us all to dance. None the less would 
this be a happy world, not because Ave were all 
dancing, but because Ave each enjoyed the sight of 
such a spectacle. Many young officers take 
intense pride in their regiments, and the char- 
acter of such regiments may in a certain sense be 
called a corporate thing. But it depends entirely 
on the personal character of their members, and 
all that the phrase really indicates is that a set of 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 81 



men take pleasure in similar things. Thus it is 
the boast of one young officer that the members 
of his regiment all spend too much, of another 
that they all drink too much, of another that they 
are distinguished for their high rank, and of an- 
other that they are distinguished for the lowness 
of their sensuality. What differentiates one regi- 
ment from another is first and before all things 
some personal source of happiness common to all 
its members. 

And as it is with the character of a regiment, 
so too is it with the character of life in general. 
When we say that Humanity may become a glo- 
rious thing as a whole, we must mean that each 
man may attain some positive glory as an indivi- 
dual. What shall I get? and I? and I? and I? 
What do you offer me ? and me ? and me ? This 
is the first question that the common sense of 
mankind asks. " You must promise something to 
each of us," it says, "or very certainly you will 
be able to promise nothing to all of us." There is 
no real escape in saying that we must all work for 
one another, and that our happiness is to be found 
in that. The question merely confronts us with 
two other facets of itself. What sort of happi- 
ness shall I secure for others ? and what sort of 
happiness will others secure for me ? What will 
it be like ? Will it be worth having ? In the posi- 
tivism Utopia, we are told, each man's happiness 
is bound up in the happiness of all the rest, and 



82 



Is Life Worth Living? 



is thus infinitely intensified. All mankind are 
made a mighty whole, by the fusing power of 
benevolence. Benevolence, however, means sim- 
ply the wishing that our neighbors were happy, 
the helping to make them so, and lastly the being 
glad that they are so. But happiness must 
plainly be something besides benevolence; else, 
if I know that a man's highest happiness is in 
knowing that others are happy, all I shall try to 
procure for others is the knowledge that I am 
happy ; and thus the Utopian happiness would 
be expressed completely in the somewhat homely 
formula, " I am so glad that you are glad that I 
am glad/' But this is, of course, not enough. 
All this gladness must be about something besides 
itself. Our good wishes for our neighbors must 
have some farther content than that they shall 
wish us well in return. What I wish them and 
what they wish me must be something that both 
they and I, each of us, take delight in for our- 
selves. It will certainly be no delight to men to 
procure for others what they will take no delight 
in themselves, if procured by others for them. 
"For a joyful life, that is to say a pleasant life," 
as Sir Thomas More pithily puts it, "is either 
evil ; and if so, then thou shouldest not only help 
no man thereto, but rather as much as in thee 
lieth withdraw all men from it as noisome and 
hurtful ; or else if thou not only mayest, but also 
of duty art bound to procure it for others, why 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 83 



not chiefly for thyself, to whom thou art bound to 
show as much favor and gentleness as to others?" 
The fundamental question is, then, what life 
should a man try to procure for himself? How 
shall he make it most joyful? and how joyful 
will it be when he has done his utmost for it ? It 
is in terms of the individual, and of the individual 
only, that the value of life can at first be intel- 
ligibly stated. If the coin be not itself genuine, 
we shall never be able to make it so by merely 
shuffling it about from hand to hand, nor even by 
indefinitely multiplying it. A million sham bank 
notes will not make us any richer than a single 
one. Granting that the riches are really genuine, 
then the knowledge of their diffusion may mag- 
nify for each of us our own pleasure in possessing 
them. But it will only do this if the share that 
is possessed by each be itself something very great 
to begin with. Certain intense kinds of happiness 
may perhaps be raised to ecstasy by the thought 
that another shares them. But if the feeling in 
question be nothing more than cheerfulness, a 
man will not be made ecstatic by the knowledge 
that any number of other people are cheerful as 
well as he. When the happiness of two or more 
people rises to a certain temperature, then it is 
true a certain fusion may take place, and there 
may perhaps be a certain joint result, arising from 
the sum of the parts. But below this melting 
point no fuBion or union takes place at all, nor will 



is Life tVorth uimny ? 



any number of lesser happinesses melt and be 
massed together into one great one. Two great 
wits may increase each other's brilliancy, but f wo 
half-wits will not make a single whole one. A 
bad picture will not become good by being mag- 
nified, nor will a merely readable novel become 
more than readable by the publication of a mil- 
lion copies of it. Suppose it were a matter of life 
and death to ten men to walk to York from London 
in a day. "Were this feat a possible one, they 
might no doubt each do their best to help the 
others to accomplish it. But if it were beyond 
the power of each singly, they would not accom- 
plish it as a body, by the whole ten leaving Char- 
ing Cross together, and each of them walking 
one-tenth of the way. The distance they could 
all walk would be no greater than the distance 
they could each walk. In the same way the 
value of human life, as a whole, depends on the 
capacities of the individual human being, as an 
enjoying animal. If these capacities be great, we 
shall be eager in our desire to gratify them — cer- 
tainly for ourselves, and perhaps also for others ; 
and this second desire may perhaps be great 
enough to modify and to guide the first. But un- 
less these capacities be great, and the means of 
gratifying them definite, our impulses on our 
own behalf will become weak and sluggish, whilst 
those on behalf of others will become less able to 
control them. 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 85 

It will be apparent farther from this, that just 
as happiness, unless some distinct positive quality, 
gains nothing as an end of action, either in value 
or distinctness, by a mere diffusion in, the present 
—by an extension, as it were, laterally — so will it 
gain nothing further by giving it another dimen- 
sion, and by prospectively increasing it in the 
future. We must know what it is first, before we 
know whether it is capable of increase. Apart 
from this knowledge, the conception of progress 
and the hope of some brighter destiny can add 
nothing to that required something, which, so far 
as sociology can define it for us, we have seen to 
be so utterly inadequate. Social conditions, it is 
true, we may expect will go on improving; we 
may hope that the social machinery will come 
gradually to run more smoothly. But unless we 
know something positive to the contrary, the out- 
come of all this progress may be nothing but a 
more undisturbed ennui or a more soulless sensu- 
ality. The rose-leaves may be laid more smoothly, 
and yet the man that lies on them may be wearier 
or more degraded. 

" To-inorrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day ; 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death." 

This, for all that sociology can inform us io the 
contrary, may be the lesson really taught us by 
the positive philosophy of progress. 



86 



Is Life Worth Living? 



But what the positivists themselves learn from 
it, is something very different. The following 
verses are George Eliot's : 

" Oh may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In lives made better by their presence. So 
To five is heaven. ... 
To make undying music in the world, 
Breathing us beautous order that controls . 
With growing sway the growing life of man. 
So we inherit that sweet purity 
For which we struggled, groaned, and agonised 
With widening retrospect, that bred despair. • • 
That better self shall live till human time 
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky 
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb 
Unread for ever. This is life to come, 
Which martyred men have made more glorious 
For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven, and be to other souls 
That cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense ; 
So shall I join that choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world." 

Here is tlie positive religion of benevolence and 
progress, as preached to the modern world in the 
name o£ exact thought, presented to us in an 
impassioned epitome. Here is hope, ardor, sym- 
pathy, and resolution, enough and to spare. The 
first question is, — How are these kindled, and 
what are they all about ? They must, as we have 
seen, be about something that the science of socio- 
logy will not discover for us. Nor can they last, 



Sociology as the Foundation of Morality. 87 



if, like an empty stomach, they prey only upon 
themselves. They must have some solid content, 
and the great thing needful is to discern this. It 
is quite true that to suffer, or even to die, will often 
seem dalce et decorum to a man ; but it will only 
seem so when the end he dies , or suffers for is, in 
his estimation, a worthy one. A Christian might 
be gladly crucified if by so doing he could turn 
men from vice to virtue; but a connoisseur in wine 
would not be crucified that his best friend might 
prefer dry champagne to sweet. All the agony 
and the struggles, then, that the positivist saint 
suffers with such enthusiasm, depend alike for 
their value and their possibility on the object that 
is supposed to cause them. And in the verses 
just quoted this object is indeed named several 
times ; but it is named only incidentally and in 
vague terms, as if its nature and its value were self- 
evident, and could be left to take care of them- 
selves; and the great thing to be dwelt upon were 
the means and not the end : whereas the former 
are really only the creatures of the latter, and can 
have no more honor than the latter is able to 
bestow upon them. 

Now the only positive ends named in these 
verses are " the better self," " sweet purity," and 
u smiles that have no cruelty." The conditions of 
these are "beauteous order," and the result of 
them is the " gladness of the world." The rest of 
the language used adds nothing to our positive 



88 



Is Life Worth Living? 



knowledge, but merely makes us feel the want of 
it. The purest heaven, we are told, that the men 
of any generation can look forward to, will be the 
increased gladness that their right conduct will 
secure for a coming generation : and that glad- 
ness, when it comes, will be, as it were, the sera- 
phic song of the blessed and holy dead. Thus 
every present, for the positivist, is the future life 
of the past ; earth is heaven perpetually realising 
itself ; it is, as it were, an eternal choir-practice, 
in which the performers, though a little out of 
tune at present, are becoming momently more and 
more perfect. If this be so, there is a heaven of 
some sort about us at this moment. There is a 
musical gladness every day in our ears, our actual 
delight in which it might have been a heaven to 
our great-grandfathers to have anticipated in the 
last century. 

Now it is plain that this alleged music is not 
everywhere. Where, then, is it? And will it, 
when we have it, be found to merit all the praise 
that is bestowed upon it ? Sociology, as we have 
seen, may show us how to secure to each per- 
former his voice or his instrument ; but it will not 
show us how to make either the voice or the in- 
strument a good one ; nor will it decide whether 
the orchestra shall perform Beethoven or Offen- 
bach, or whether the chorus shall sing a peniten- 
tial psalm or a drinking song. When we have 
discovered what the world's highest gladness can 



Goodness as its own Reward. 



89 



consist of, we will again come to the question of 
how far such gladness can be a general end of 
action. 



" Who chooses me must give, and hazard all he hath." — Inscrip- 
tion on the Leaden Casket. — Merchant of Venice. 



HAT I have been urging in the last chapter 



* V is really nothing more than the positivists 
admit themselves. It will be found, if we study 
their utterances as a whole, that they by no means 
believe practically in their own professions, or con- 
sider that the end of action can be either defined 
and verified by sociology, or made attractive by 
sympathy. On the contrary, they confess plainly 
how inadequate these are by themselves, by con- 
tinually supplementing them with additions from 
quite another quarter. But their fault is that this 
confession is, apparently, only half conscious with 
them ; and they are for ever reproducing arguments 
as sufficient which they have already in other mo- 
ments implicitly condemned as meaningless. My 
aim has been, therefore, to put these arguments out 
of court altogether, and safely shut the doors on 



CHAPTER IV. 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN KEWAKD. 




90 



Is Life Worth Living? 



them. Hitherto they have played just the part 
of an idle populace, often turned out of doors, 
but as often breaking in again, and confusing with 
their noisy cheers a judgment that has not yet 
been given. Let us have done, then, with the con- 
ditions of happiness till we know what happiness 
is. Let us have done with enthusiasm till we 
know if there is anything to be enthusiastic about. 

I have quoted George Eliot's cheers already, as 
expressing what this enthusiasm is. I will now 
quote her again, as showing how fully she recog- 
nises that its value depends upon its object, and 
that its only possible object must be of a definite, 
and in the first place, of a personal nature. In her 
novel of Daniel Deronda, the large part of the in- 
terest hangs on which way the heroine's character 
will develop itself; and this interest, in the opinion 
of the authoress, is of a very intense kind. Why 
should it be? she asks explicitly. And she gives 
her answer in the following very remarkable and 
very instructive passage : 

" Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant 
thread," she says, "in human history, than this 
consciousness of a girl, busy with her small infer- 
ences of the way in which she could make her life 
pleasant ? in a time too, when ideas were with 
fresh vigor making armies of themselves, and the 
universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely 
when women on the other side of the world would 
not mourn for the husbands and sons who died 



Goodness as its own Reward. 



91 



bravelv in a common cause ; and men, stinted of 
bread, on one side of the world, heard of that 
willing loss and were patient ; a time when the 
soul of man was waking the pulses which had for 
centuries been beating in him unheard, until their 
full sense made a new life of terror or of joy. 

" What in the midst of that mighty drama are 
girls and their blind visions ? They are the Yea 
or Nay of that good for which men are enduring 
and fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne 
onward through the ages the treasure of human 
affections." 

Now here we come to solid ground at last. 
Here is an emphatic and frank admission of all 
that I was urging in the last chapter ; and the re- 
quired end of action and test of conduct is brought 
to a focus and localised. It is not described, it is 
true ; but a narrow circle is drawn round it, and 
our future search for it becomes a matter of com- 
parative ease. We are in a position now to 
decide whether it exists, or does not exist. It 
consists primarily and before all things in the 
choice by the individual of one out of many modes 
of happiness — the election of a certain " way," in 
George Eliot's words, "in which he will make 
his life pleasant." There are many sets of plea- 
sure open to him ; but there is one set, it is said, 
more excellent, beyond comparison, than the 
others ; and to choose these, and these alone, is 
what will give us part in the holy value of life. 



92 



Is Life Worth Living? 



The choice and the refusal of them is the Yea and 
the Nay of all that makes life worth living ; and 
is the source, to the positivists, of the solemnity, 
the terrors, and sweetness of the whole ethical 
vocabulary. "What then are the alternative 
pleasures that life offers me ? In how many ways 
am / capable of feeling my existence a blessing ? 
and in what way shall / feel the blessing of it 
most keenly ?" This is the great life-question ; it 
may be asked indifferently by any individual ; and 
in the positivist answer to it, which will be the 
same for all, and of universal application, must lie 
the foundation of the positive moral system. 

And that system, as I have said before, pro- 
fesses to be essentially a moral one, in the old 
religious sense of the word. It retains the old 
ethical vocabulary ; and lays the same intense 
stress on the old ethical distinctions. Nor is this 
a mere profession only. We shall see that the 
system logically requires it. One of its chief vir- 
tues — indeed the only virtue in it we have defined 
hitherto — is, as has been seen, an habitual self- 
denial. But a denial of what ? Of something, 
plainly, that if denied to ourselves, can be con- 
veyed as a negative or positive good to others. 
But the good things that are thus transferable 
cannot plainly be the "highest good," or mor- 
ality would consist largely of a surrender of its 
own end. This end must evidently be something 
inward and inalienable, just as the religious end 



Goodness as its own Reward. 93 



was. It is a certain inward state of the heart, and 
of the heart's affections. For this inward state to 
be fully produced, and maintained generally, a cer- 
tain sufficiency of material well-being may be re- 
quisite; but without this inward state such suffici- 
ency will be morally valueless. Day by day we 
must of course have our daily bread. But the posi- 
tivists must maintain, just as the Christians did, 
that man does not live by bread alone ; and that his 
life does not consist in the abundance of the things 
that he possesses. And thus when they are 
brought face to face with the matter, we find them 
all, with one consent, condemning as false the 
same allurements that were condemned by 
Christianity; and pointing, as it did, to some 
other treasure that will not wax old — some water, 
the man who drinks of which will never thirst 
more. 

Now what is this treasure — this inward state 
of the heart ? What is its analysis, and why is it 
so precious ? As yet we are quite in the dark as 
to this. No positive moralist has as yet shown us, 
in any satisfactory way, either of these things. 
This statement, I know, will be contradicted by 
many ; and, until it is explained further, it is only 
natural that it should be. It will be said that a 
positive human happiness of just the kind needed 
has been put before the world again and again; 
and not only put before it, but earnestly followed 
and reverently enjoyed by many. Have not truth, 



94 Is Life Worth Living ? 



benevolence, purity and, above all, pure affection, 
been, to many, positive ends of action for their 
own sakes, without any thought, as Dr. Tyndall 
says, " of any reward or punishment looming in 
the future ?" Is not virtue followed in the noblest 
way, when its followers, if asked what reward they 
look for, can say to it, as Thomas Aquinas said to 
Christ, "Nil nisi te, Domine?" And has not it 
so been followed ? and is not the positivist posi- 
tion, to a large extent at any rate, proved ? 

Is it not true, as has been said by a recent 
writer, that* " lives nourished and invigorated by 
[a purely human] ideal have been, and still may 
be, seen amongst us, and the appearance of but a 
single example proves the adequacy of the belief V* 
I reply that the fact is entirely true, and the 
inference entirely false. And this brings me at 
once to a point I have before alluded to — to the 
most subtle source of the entire positivist error — ■ 
the source, secret and unsuspected, of so much 
rash confidence. 

The positive school can, and do, as we have 
seen, point to certain things in life which have 
every appearance, at first sight, of adequate moral 
ends. Their adequacy seems to be verified by 
every right feeling, and also by practical experi- 
ment. But there is one great fact that is forgot- 
ten. The positive school, when they deal with life,. 



* Vide Pessimism, by James Sully. 



Goodness as its oivn Reward. 95 



profess to exhibit its resources to us wholly free 
from the false aids of religion. They profess (if I 
may coin a word) to have de-religionised it before 
they deal with it. But about this matter they 
betray a most strange ignorance. They think the 
task is far simpler than it is. They seem to look 
on religion as existing nowhere except in its pure 
form, in the form of distinct devotional feeling, or in 
the conscious assents of faith ; and, these once got 
rid of, they fancy that life is de-religionised. But 
the process thus far is really only begun ; indeed, as 
far as immediate results go, it is hardly even begun; 
for it is really but a very small proportion of reli- 
gion that exists pure. The greater part of it has 
entered into combination with the acts and feelings 
of life, thus forming, as it were, a kind of amalgam 
with them, giving them new properties, a new 
color, a new consistence. To de-religionise life, 
then, it is not enough to condemn creeds and to 
abolish prayers. We must further sublimate the 
beliefs and feelings which prayers and creeds hold 
pure, out of the lay life around us. Under this 
process, even if imperfectly performed, it will soon 
become clear that religion in greater or less pro- 
portions is lurking everywhere. We shall see it 
yielded up even by things in which we should 
least look for it — by wit, by humor, by secular 
ambition, by most forms of vice, and by our daily 
light amusements. Much more shall we see it 
yielded up by heroism, by purity, by affection, 



96 



Is Life Worth Living f 



and by love of truth — by all those things that 
the positivists most specially praise. 

The positivists think, it would seem, that they 
had but to kill God, and that his inheritance shall 
be ours. They strike out accordingly the theistic 
beliefs in question, and then turn instantly to life : 
they sort its resources, count its treasures, and then 
say, " Aim at this, and this, and this. See how 
beautiful is holiness ; see how rapturous is plea- 
sure. Surely these are worth seeking for their 
own sakes, without any 'reward or punishment 
looming in the future."' They find, in fact, the 
interests and the sentiments of the world's present 
life — all the glow and all the gloom of it — lying 
before them like the colors on a painter's palette, 
and think they have nothing to do but set to work 
and use them. But let them wait a moment; they 
are in far too great a hurry. The palette and its 
colors are not nearly ready for them. 

One of the colors of life — religion, that is — a 
color which, by their own admission, has been 
hitherto an important one, they have swept clear 
away. They have swept it clean away, and let 
them remember why they have done so. It may 
be a pleasing color, or it may not : that is a 
matter of taste. But the reason why it is to be 
got rid of is that it is not a fast color. It is found 
to fade instantly in the spreading sunlight of know- 
ledge. It is rapidly getting dim and dull and dead. 
When once it is gone, we shall never be able to 



Goodness as its own Reward. 



97 



restore it, and our future pictures of life must be 
tinted without its aid. They therefore profess 
loudly that they will employ it no longer. 

But there is this point, this all-important point, 
that quite escapes them. They sweep the color, 
in its pure state, clean off the palette ; and then 
profess to show us by experiment that they can 
get on perfectly well without it. But they never 
seem to suspect that it may be mixed up with the 
colors they retain, and be the secret of their depth 
and lustre. Let them see whether religion be not 
lurking there, as a subtle coloring principle in all 
their pigments, even a grain of it producing effects 
that else were quite impossible. Let them only 
begin this analysis, and it will very soon be clear 
to them that to cleanse life of religion is not so 
simple a process as they seem to fancy it. Its 
actual dogmas may be readily put away from 
us; not so the effect which these dogmas have 
worked during the course of centuries. In dis- 
guised forms they are around us everywhere; they 
confront us in every human interest, in every 
human pleasure. They have beaten themselves 
into life ; they have eaten their way into it. Like 
a secret sap they have flavored every fruit in the 
garden. They are like a powerful drug, a stimu- 
lant, that has been injected into our whole system. 

If then we could appraise the vigor and value 
of life independent of religion, w^e can draw no 
direct conclusions from observing it in its present 

6 



98 



Is Life Worth Living? 



state. Before such observations can teach us any- 
thing, there is a great deal that will have to be 
made allowance for : and the positive school, 
when they reason from life as it is, are building 
therefore on an utterly unsound foundation. It 
is emphatically untrue to say that a single ex- 
ample in the present day, or for matter of that 
any number of examples, either goes or can go 
any way towards proving the adequacy of any non- 
religious formula. For all such formulae have first 
to be further analysed before we know how far 
they are really non-religious; and secondly the 
religious element that will be certainly found 
existing in them will have, hypothetically, to be 
removed. 

It would be well if the positive school would 
spend in this spiritual analysis but a little of that 
skill they have attained to in their analysis of 
matter In their experiments, for instance, on 
spontaneous generation, what untold pains have 
been taken ! With what laborious thought, with 
what emulous ingenuity, have they struggled to 
completely sterilise the fluids in which they are to 
seek for the new production of life ! How jeal- 
ously do they guard against leaving there any 
already existing germs ! How easily do they tell 
us their experiments may be vitiated by the small- 
est oversight ! 

Surely spiritual matters are worthy of an equal- 
ly careful treatment. For what we have here to 



Goodness as its oivn Reward. 



99 



study is not the production of the lowest forms of 
animal life, but the highest forms of human happi- 
ness. These were once thought to be always due 
to religion. The modern doctrine is that they are 
producible without such aid. Let us treat, then, 
the beauty of holiness, the love of truth, "the 
treasure of human affection," and so forth, as Dr. 
Tyndall has treated the infusions in which life is 
said to originate. Let us boil them down, so to 
speak, and destroy every germ of religion in them, 
and then see how far they will generate the same 
ecstatic happiness. And let us treat in this way 
vice no less than virtue. Having once done this, 
we may honestly claim whatever yet remains to 
us. Then, we shall see what materials of happi- 
ness we can, as positive thinkers, call our own. 
Then, a positive moral system, if any such be 
possible, will begin to have a real value for us — 
then, but not till then. 

Such an analysis as this must be naturally a 
work of time ; and much of it must be performed 
by each one of us for ourselves. But a sample of 
the operation can be given here, which will show 
plainly enough its nature, and the ultimate results 
of it. I shall begin, for this purpose, with recon- 
sidering the moral end generally, and the three 
primary characteristics that are ascribed, by all 
parties, to it, as essentials. I shall point out, 
generally also, how much of religion is embodied 
in all these; and shall then proceed to one or 



100 



15 Life Worth Living? 



two concrete examples, taken from the pleasures 
and passions that animate the life around us. 

These three characteristics of the moral end are 
its inwardness, its importance, and, within certain 
limits, its absolute character. 

I begin with its inwardness. I have spoken of 
this several times already, but the matter is so im- 
portant that it will well bear repetition. By call- 
ing the moral end inward, I mean that it resides 
primarily not in action, but in motives to action ; 
in the will, not in the deed ; not in what we 
actually do, but in w^hat we actually endeavor to 
do ; in the love we give, rather than in the love 
that we receive. What defiles a man is that 
which comes out of his heart — evil thoughts, mur- 
ders, adulteries. The thoughts may never find 
utterance in a word, the murders and adulteries 
may never be fulfilled in act ; and yet, if a man be 
restrained, not by his own will, but only by outer 
circumstances, his immorality will be the same. 
The primary things we are " responsible for," ob- 
serves a recent positive writer,* are "frames of 
mind into which we knowingly and willingly work 
ourselves:" and when these are once wrong, he 
adds, "they are wrong for ever: no accidental 
failure of their good or evil fruits can possibly 
alter that." And as with what is wrong or vicious, 
so with what is right or virtuous ; this in a like 

* Pbofessob Clifford; "Ethics of Belief." Contemporary Review, Jan. 
1877. 



Goodness as its own Reward. 



101 



manner proceeds out of the mind or heart. " The 
gladness of true heroism/' says Dr.Tyndall, "visits 
the heart of him who is really competent to say, 
'I court truth.'" It is not, be it observed, the 
objective attainment of truth that creates the 
gladness. It is the subjective desire, the subjec- 
tive resolution. The moral end, for the positivist 
just as much as for the believer, is a certain inward 
state of the heart, or mind — a state which will of 
necessity, if possible, express itself in action, but 
whose value is not to be measured by the success 
of that expression. The battle-ground of good 
and evil is within us ; and the great human event 
is the issue of the struG^le between them. 

And this leads us on to the second point. The 
language used on all hands respecting this struggle, 
implies that its issue is of an importance great 
out of all proportion to our own consciousness of 
the results of it, nay, even that it is independent 
of our consciousness. It is implied that though 
a man may be quite ignorant of the state of his 
own heart, and though no one else can so much 
as guess at it, what that state is is of great and 
peculiar moment. If this were not so, and the im- 
portance of our inner state had reference only to 
our own feelings about it, self-deception would be 
as good as virtue. To believe we were upright, 
pure, and benevolent would be as good as to be so. 
We might have all the pleasures of morality with 
none of its inconveniences ; for it is easy, if I may 



102 



Is Life Worth Living? 



borrow a plirase of Mr. Tennyson's, to become so 
false that we take ourselves for true; and thus, 
tested by any pain or joy that we ourselves were 
conscious of, the results of the completest false- 
hood would be the same as those of the comple- 
test virtue. 

But let a man be never so perfect an instance 
of a result like this, no positivist moralist would 
contend that he was virtuous, or that he could be 
said, at his death, to have found the true treasure 
of life. On the contrary, his career would be re- 
garded as, in the profoundest sense, a tragedy. 
It is for this reason that such a value is set at 
present upon feminine purity, and that we are 
accustomed to call the woman ruined that has lost 
it. The outer harm done may not be great, and 
may lead to no ill consequences. The harm is all 
within; the tragedy is in the soul itself. But — and 
this is more important still — even here the harm 
may not be recognised : the act in question may 
lead to no remorse : and yet despite this, the case 
will be made no better. On the contrary it will 
be made a great deal worse. Any father or hus- 
band would recognise this, who was not profess- 
edly careless about all moral matters altogether. 
It would not, for instance, console a posivist for 
his daughter's seduction to know that the matter 
was hushed up, and that it gave the lady herself 
no concern whatever. It is implied in the lan- 
guage of all who profess to regard morality, that 



Goodness as its oivn Reward. 103 



whether the guilty person be conscious or no of 
any remorse or sorrow, the same harm has been 
done by what we call guilt. 

There is, however (and this brings us to the 
third point), a very large part of the world that, 
as a fact, no matter what it professes, really sets 
upon morality no true value whatever. If it has 
ever realised at ail what morality is, it has done 
so only partially; it has been more impressed 
with its drawbacks than with its attractions, and 
it becomes practically happier and more contented 
the more it forgets the very idea of virtue. But 
it is implied, as we have seen, in the usual lan- 
guage of all of us that, let the vicious be as happy 
as possible, they have no right to such a happiness, 
and that if they choose to take it, it will in some 
way or other be the worse for tl;em. This lan- 
guage evidently implies farther that there is some 
standard by which happiness is to be measured, 
quite apart from its completeness, and from our 
individual desire for it. That standard is some- 
thing absolute, beyond and above the taste of any 
single man or of any body of men. It is a stan- 
dard to which the human race can be authorita- 
tively ordered to conform, or be despised, derided, 
and hated, if it refuse to do so. It is implied 
that those who find their happiness in virtue have 
a right to order and to force, if possible, all others 
to do the same. Unless we believed this there 
would be no such thing as moral earnestness in 



1<K 



Is Life Worth Living? 



the propagation of any system. There could, in- 
deed, be no such thing as propagandism at all. 
If a man (to use an example of Mill's) preferred 
to be a contented pig rather than a discontented 
Socrates, we should have no positive reason for 
thinking him wrong; even did we think so we 
should have no motive for telling him so; even if 
we told him, we should have no means of convinc- 
ing him. 

Those, then, who regard morality as the rule of 
action, and the one key that can unlock for each 
of us the true treasure of life, who talk of things 
being noble and sacred and heroic, who call our 
responsibilities and our privileges'" awful, and who 
unxe on a listless world the earnestness and the 
solemnity of existence — all those, I say, who use 
such language as this, imply of the moral end 
three necessary things : first, that its essence is 
inward, in the heart of man ; secondly, that its 
value is incalculable, and its attainment the only 
true happiness for us ; thirdly, that its standard 
is something absolute, and not in the competence 
of any man or of all men to alter or abolish. 
That this is true may be very easily seen. Deny 
any one of these propositions ; say that the moral 
end consists in something outward and alienable, 
not in something inward and inalienable ; that its- 
importance is small, and second to many other 



* ' 'An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help 
to create a world in which posterity will Iiv -*e J" — PjiOtfESSOJS Cutfj-OivD. 



Goodness as its oivn Reivard. 



105 



things ; that its standard is not absolute, but 
varies according to individual taste ; and morality 
becomes at once impossible to preach, and not 
worth preaching. 

Now for all these characteristics of the end of 
life, the theism that modern thought is rejecting 
could offer a strictly logical basis. And first, as 
to its importance. Here it may be said, certainly, 
that theism cuts the knot, and does not untie it. 
But at all events it gets rid of it ; and in the fol- 
lowing way. The theist confesses freely that the 
importance of the moral end is a thing that the 
facts of life, as we now know them, will never 
properly explain to us. It can at present be 
divined and augured only ; its value is one of 
promise rather than of performance ; and the pos- 
session itself is a thing that passes understanding. 
It belongs to a region of mystery into which 
neither logic nor experiment will ever suffice to 
carry us ; and whose secrets are beyond the reach 
of any intellectual aeronaut. But it is a part of 
the theistic creed that such a region is ; and that 
the things that pass understanding are the most 
important things of life. Nothing would be gained, 
however, by postulating merely a mystery — an 
unknowable. This must be so far known by the 
theist, that he knows its connection with himself. 
He must know, too, that if this connection is to 
have any effect on him, it must be not merely 
temporary, but permanent and indissoluble. Such 



106 



Is Life Worth Living? 



a connection he finds in his two distinctive doc- 
trines — the existence of a personal God which 
gives him the connection ; and his own personal 
immortality, which perpetuates it. Thus the 
theist, upon his own theory, has an eye ever upon 
him. He is in constant relationship with a con- 
scious omnipotent Being, in whose likeness he is 
in some sort formed, and to which he is in some 
sort kin. To none of his actions is this Beim? 
indifferent ; and with this Being his relations for 
good or evil will never cease. Thus, though he 
may not realise their true nature now, though he 
may not realise how infinitely good the good is, 
or how infinitely evil the evil, there is a day in 
store for him when his eyes will be opened, and 
what he now sees only through a glass darkly, he 
will see face to face. 

The objectivity of the moral end — or rather the 
objective standard of the subjective end — is ex- 
plained in the same way. The standard is God's 
will, not man's immediate happiness. And yet 
to this will, as soon as, by natural or supernatural 
means, we discern it, the Godlike part of our 
nature at once responds : it at once acknowledges 
it as eternal and divine, although we can give no 
logical reasons for such acknowledgment. 

By the light, too, of these same beliefs, the in- 
wardness of the moral end assumes an explicable 
meaning. Man's primary duty is towards God ; 
his secondary duty is towards his brother men ; 



Goodness as its own Reward. 



107 



and it is only from the filial relation that the fra- 
ternal springs. The moral end, then, is so pre- 
cious in the eyes of the theist, because the inward 
state that it consists of is agreeable to what God 
wills — a God who reads the heart, and who can- 
not be deceived. And the theist's peace or glad- 
ness in his highest moral actions springs not so 
much from the consciousness of what he does or 
is, as of the reasons why he does or is it — reasons 
that reach far away beyond the earth and its des- 
tinies, and connect him with some timeless and 
holy mystery. 

Thus theism, whether it be true or no, can give 
a logical and full account of the supposed nature 
of the moral end, and of its supposed importance. 
Let us turn now to positivism, and consider what 
is its position. The posit ivist, we must remem- 
ber, conceives of the moral end in the same way, 
and sets upon it the same value. Let us see 
how far his own premisses will give him any 
support in this. These premisses, so far as they 
differ from those of theism, consist of two great 
denials: there is no personal God, and there is no 
personal immortality. We will glance rapidly at 
the direct results of these. 

In the first place, they confine all the life with 
which we can have the least moral connection to 
the surface of this earth, and to the limited time 
for which life and consciousness can exist upon it. 
They isolate the moral law, as I shall show more 



108 



Js Life Worth Living? 



clearly hereafter, from any law or force in the 
universe that may be wider and more permanent. 
When the individual dies, he can only be said to 
live by metaphor, in the results of his outward 
actions. "When the race dies, in no thinkable way 
can we say that it will live at all. Everything 
will then be as though it never had been. What- 
ever humanity may have done before its end 
arrives, however high it may have raised itself, 
however low it may have sunk itself, 

"The event 
Will trammel up the consequence, and catch, 
With its success, surcease." 

All the vice of the world, and all its virtue, all its 
pleasures and all its pains, will have effected no- 
thing. They will all have faded like an unsub- 
stantial pageant, and not left a wrack behind. 

Here, then, the importance of morality at once 
changes both its dimensions and its kind. It is 
confined within narrow limitations of space and 
time. It is no longer a thing we can talk vaguely 
about, or to which any sounding but indefinite 
phrases will be applicable. We can no longer 
say either to the individual or the race, 

" Choose Tvell, and your choice is 
Brief, but yet endless."* 

We can only say that it is brief, and that by and 
by what it was will be no matter to anyone. 



* Goethe, translated by Carlyle. 



Goodness as its own Reward. 109 



Still within these limits it may be said, certainly, 
that it is a great thing for us that we should be 
happy ; and if it be true that the moral end brings 
the greatest happiness, then it is man's greatest 
achievement to attain the moral end. But when 
we say that the greatest happiness resides in 
the moral end, we must be careful to see what 
it is we mean. We may mean that as a matter 
of fact men generally give a full assent to this, 
and act accordingly, which is the most obvious 
falsehood that could be uttered on any subject; 
or we may mean — indeed, if we mean anything 
we must mean — that they would give a full as- 
sent, and act accordingly could their present state 
of mind undergo a complete change, and their 
eyes be opened, which at present are fast closed. 
But according to the positivist theory, this hypo- 
thesis is in most cases an impossibility. The 
moral end, as we have seen, is an inward state of 
the heart; and the heart on the showing of the 
positivists, is for each man an absolute solitude. 
No one can gain admission to it but by his assist- 
ance ; and to the larger part no one can ever gain 
admission at all. 

" Thus in the seas of life enisled, 

With echoing straits between us thrown, 
Dotting the shoreless watery wild, 
We mortal myriads live alone." 

So says Mr. Matthew Arnold; and the gentle 
Keble utters the same sentiment, remarking, with 



110 



Is Life Worth Living? 



a delicate pathos, how seldom those even who 
have known us best and longest 

" Know half the reason why we smile or sigh." 

Thus in the recesses of his own soul each man is, 
for the positivist, as much alone as if he were the 
only conscious thing in the universe ; and his 
whole inner life, when he dies, will, to use some 
words of George Eliot's that I have already quoted, 

Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, 
Unread for ever." 

No one shall inquire into his inward thoughts, 
much less shall any one judge him for them. To 
no one except himself can he in any way have to 
answer for them. 

Such is the condition of the individual accord- 
ing to the positivist theory. It is evident, there- 
fore, that one of the first results of positivism is 
to destroy even the rudiments of any machinery 
by which one man could govern, with authority, 
the inward kingdom of another ; and the moral 
imperative is reduced to an empty vaunt. For 
what can be an emptier flourish than for one set 
of men, and these a confessed minority, to pro- 
claim imperious laws to others, which they can 
never get the others to obey, and which are essen- 
tially meaningless to the only people to whom they 
are not superfluous ? Suppose that, on positive 
grounds, I find pleasure in humility, and my friend 
finds pleasure in pride, and so far as we can form 



Goodness as its oivn Reward. 



Ill 



a judgment the happiness of us both is equal ; 
what possible grounds can I have for calling my 
state better than his ? Were I a theist, I should 
have the best of grounds, for I should believe that 
hereafter my friend's present contentment would 
be dissipated, and would give place to despair. 
But as a positivist, if his contentment do but last 
his lifetime, what can I say except this, that he 
has chosen what, for him, was his better part for 
ever, and no God or man will ever take it away 
from him ? To say then that his immoral state 
was worse than my moral state would be a phrase 
incapable of any practical meaning. It might 
mean that, could my friend be made to think as I 
do, he would be happier than he is at present ; 
but we have here an impossible hypothesis, and 
an unverifiable conclusion. It is true enough that 
I might present to my friend some image of my 
own inward state, and of all the happiness it gave 
me ; but if, having compared his happiness and 
mine as well as he could, he still liked his own best, 
exhortation w^ould have no power, and reproach 
no meaning. 

Here, then, are three results — simple, imme- 
diate, and necessary — of positivism, on the moral 
end. Of the three characteristics at present sup- 
posed essential to it, positivism eliminates two 
and materially modifies the third. 

In the first place, the importance of the moral 
end is altogether changed in character. It has 



112 



Is Life Worth Living? 



nothing in it whatever of the infinite, and a scien- 
tific forecast can already see the end of it, 

In the second place, it is nothing absolute, and 
not being absolute is incapable of being enforced. 

In the third place, its value, such as it is, is 
measured only by the conscious happiness that its 
possession gives us, or the conscious pains v that 
its loss gives us. 

Still it may be contended with plausibility that 
the moral end, when once seen, is sufficient to at- 
tract us by its own inalienable charm, and can 
hold its own independently of any further theories 
as to its nature and its universality. It remains 
now to come to practical life, and see if this 
really be so ; to see if the pleasures in life that 
are supposed the highest will not lose their at- 
tractiveness when robbed of the three character- 
Mies of which the positive theory robs them. 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



113 



CHAPTER V 
LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS 

Epwra Se, rbv rvpawov avSpwv, 
Tov ras' 'A^poStra? 
QiAtoltiov 6a\dfJiwv 
"KXrjSov^ov, ov aefji^ofxev, 
TLepOovi a.—Euriirides. 

I WILL again re-state, in other words than my 
own, the theory we are now going to test by 
the actual facts of life. "The assertion/' says 
Professor Huxley, "that morality is in any way 
dependent on certain philosophical problems, pro- 
duces the same effect on my mind as if one should 
say that a man's vision depends on his theory of 
sight, or that he has no business to be sure that 
ginger is hot in his mouth, unless he has formed 
definite views as to the nature of ginger." Or, to 
put the matter in slightly different language, the 
sorts of happiness, we are told, that are secured 
to us by moral conduct are facts, so far as regards 
our own consciousness of them, as simple, as con- 
stant and as universal, as is the perception of the 
outer world secured to us by our eyesight, or as 
the sensation formed on the palate by the appli- 
cation of ginger to it. 
Love, for instance, according to this view, is as 

7 



114 



Is Life Worth Living } t 



simple a delight for men in its highest forms as it 
is for animals in its lowest. What George Eliot 
calls " the treasure of human affection " depends 
as little for its value on any beliefs outside itself 
as does the treasure of animal appetite; and just 
as no want of religious faith can deprive the ani- 
mals of the last, so no want of religious faith can 
deprive mankind of the first. It will remain a 
stable possession to us, amid the wreck of creeds, 
giving life a solemn and intense value of its own. 
It will never fail us as a sure test of conduct. 
Whatever guides us to this treasure we shall 
know is moral ; whatever tends to withdraw us 
from it we shall know is immoral. 

Such is the positivist theory as to all the higher 
pleasures of life, of which affection confessedly is 
one of the chief, and also the most obviously hu- 
man. Let us proceed now from generalities to 
special concrete facts, and see how far this theory 
is borne out by them. And we can find none 
better than those which are now before us — the 
special concrete facts of affection, and of sexual 
affection in particular. 

The affection of man for woman — or, as it will 
be best to call it, love — has been, ever since time 
was, one of the chief elements in the life of mam 
But it was not till Christianity had very fully devel- 
oped itself that it assumed the peculiar importance 
that is now claimed for it. For the ancient world 
it w T as a passion sure to come to most men, and 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 115 



that would bring joy or sorrow to them as the 
case might be. The worldly wisdom of some con- 
vinced them that it gave more joy than sorrow ; 
so they took and used it as long as it chanced to 
please them. The worldly wisdom of others con- 
vinced them that it gave more sorrow than joy, 
so they did all they could, like Lucretius, to school 
themselves into a contempt for it. But for the 
modern world it is on quite a different footing, and 
its value does not depend on such a chance bal- 
ance of pains and pleasures. The latter are not 
of the same nature as the former, and so cannot 
be outweighed by them. In the judgment of the 
modern world, 

w 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all." 

To love, in fact, though not exactly said to be in- 
cumbent upon all men, is yet endowed with some- 
thing that is almost of the nature of a duty. If a 
man cannot love, it is looked on as a sort of moral 
misfortune, if not as a moral fault in him. And 
when a man can love, and does love successfully, 
then it is held that his whole nature has burst 
out into blossom. The imaginative literature of 
the modern world centres chiefly about this human 
crisis ; and its importance in literature is but a 
reflection of its importance in life. It is, as it 
were, the sun of the world of sentiment — the 
source of its lights and colors, and also of its 



116 



Is Life Worth Living? 



shadows. It is the crown of man's existence ; it 
gives life its highest quality; and, if we can be- 
lieve what those who have known it tell us, earth 
under its influence seems to be melting into, and 
to be almost joined with, heaven. 

All this language, however, about love, no mat- 
ter how true in a certain sense it may be, is em- 
phatically true about it in a certain sense only, 
and is by no means to be taken without reserve. 
It is emphatically not true about love in general, 
but only about love as modified in a certain spe- 
cial way. The form of the affection, so to speak, 
is more important than the substance of it. It 
will need but little consideration to show us that 
this is so. Love is a thing that can take count- 
less forms ; and were not the form, for the modern 
world, the thing of the first importance, the praise 
bestowed upon all forms of it would be equal, or 
graduated only with reference to intensity. But 
the very reverse of this is the case really. In our 
estimate of an affection, its intensity, though 
doubtless of great importance, is yet of an impor- 
tance that is clearly secondary. Else things that 
the modern world regards as the most abominable 
might be on a level with the things it regards as 
most pure and holy ; the lovers of Athens might 
even put to shame with their passion the calm 
sacramental constancy of many a Christian pair ; 
and the whole fabric of modern morals would be 
undermined. For, according to the modern con- 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 117 



ception of morals, love can not only give life its 
highest quality, but its lowest also. If it can 
raise man to the angels, it can also sink him below 
the beasts ; and as to its intensity, it is a force 
which will carry him in the one direction just as 
well as the other. Kind and not degree is the 
first thing needful. It is the former, and not the 
latter, that essentially separates David and Jona- 
than from Harmodius and Aristogeiton, St. Eliza- 
beth from Cleopatra, the beloved disciple from 
Antinous. How shall w^e love ? is the great ques- 
tion for us. It comes long before, How much 
shall we love ? 

Let us imagine a bride and bridegroom of the 
t}'pe that would now be most highly reverenced, 
and try to understand something of what their 
affection is. It is, of course, impossible here to 
treat such a subject adequately ; for, as Mr. Car- 
lyle says, " except musically, and in the language 
of poetry, it can hardly be so much as spoken 
about. " But enough for the present purpose can 
perhaps be said. In the first place, then, the affec- 
tion in question will be seen to rest mainly upon 
two things — firstly, on the consciousness of their 
own respective characters on the part of each ; 
and, secondly, on the idea formed by each of the 
character of the other. Each must have a faith, 
for instance, in his or her own purity, and each 
must have a like faith also in the purity of the 
other. Thus, to begin with the first requisites, a 



118 



Is Life Worth Living? 



man can only love a woman in the highest sense 
when he does so with a perfectly clear conscience. 
There must be no obstacle between them which 
shocks his sense of right, or which, if known by 
the woman, would shock hers. Were the affec- 
tion indulged in, in spite of such an obstacle, its 
fine quality would be injured, no matter how great 
its intensity ; and, instead of a moral blessing, it 
would become a moral curse. An exquisite ex- 
pression of the necessity of this personal sense of 
rightness may be read into the well-known lines, 

" I could not love thee, dear, so well, 
Loved I not honor more. ' 

Nor shall we look on honor here as having refer- 
ence only to external acts and conditions. It has 
reference equally, if not more, to the inward state 
of the heart. The man must be conscious not 
only that he is loving the right woman, but that 
he is loving her in the right way. " If I loved 
not purity more than you," he would say to her, 
" I were not worthy of you." 

And further, just as he requires to possess this 
taintless conscience himself, so does he require to 
be assured that the like is possessed by her. Un- 
less he knows that she loves purity more than him, 
there is no meaning in his aspiration that he may 
be found worthy of her. The gift of her affection 
that is of such value to him, is not of value .be- 
cause it is affection simply, but because it is affec- 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



119 



tion of a high kind ; and its elevation is of more 
consequence to him than its intensity, or even 
than its continuance. He would sooner that at 
the expense of its intensity it remained pure, than 
that at the expense of its purity it remained in- 
tense. Othello was certainly not a husband of 
the highest type, and yet we see something of 
this even in his case. His sufferings at his wife's 
supposed inconstancy have doubtless in them a 
large selfish element. Much of them is caused 
by the mere passion of jealousy. But the deep- 
est sting of all does not lie here. It lies rather in 
the thought of what his wife has done to herself, 
than of what she has done to him. This is what 
overcomes him. 

" The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets, 
Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth, 
And will not hear it. " 

He could have borne anything but a soul's 
tragedy like this : 

" Alas ! to make me 
A fixed figure for the time of scorn 
To point his slow unmoving finger at ! 
Yet I could bear that too, well — very well : 
But there, where I have garnered up my heart, 
Where I must either live, or bear no life; 
The fountain from the which my current runs 
Or else dries up; to be discarded thence! 
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads 
To knot and gender in!" 

Whenever he was with her, Desdemona might 
still be devoted to him. She might only give to 



120 



Is Life Worth Living ? 



Cassio what she could not give to her husband. 
But to Othello this would be no comfort. The 
fountain would be polluted "from which his cur- 
rent runs ;" and though its waters might still flow 
for him, he would not care to touch them. If 
this feeling is manifest in such a love as Othello's, 
much more is it manifest in love of a higher type. 
It is expressed thus, for instance, by the heroine 
of Mrs. Craven's " RecAt cVune Sceur." "I can 
indeed say," she says, " that we never loved each 
other so much as when we saw how we both loved 
God : " and again, " My husband would not have 
loved me as he did, if he had not loved God a great 
deal more." This language is of course distinctly 
religious ; but it embodies a meaning that is ap- 
preciated by the positive school as well. In posi- 
tivist language it might be expressed thus : " My 
husband would not have loved me as he did, if he 
would not, sooner than love me in any other way, 
have ceased to love me altogether." It is clear 
that this sentiment is proper, nay essential, to 
positivist affection, just as well as to Christian. 
Any pure and exalted love would at once change 
its character, if, without any further change, it 
merely believed it were free to change it. Its 
strongest element is the consciousness, not that 
it is of such a character only, but that this char- 
acter is the riq;ht one. The ideal bride and bride- 
groom, the ideal man and wife, would not value 
purity as they are supposed to do, did they not 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 121 



believe that it was not only different from ir&pur- 
ity, but essentially and incalculably better than it. 
For the positivist, just as much as the Christian, 
this sense of lightness in love is interfused with 
the affection proper, and does as it were give wings 
to it. It far more than makes good for the lovers 
any loss of intensity that may be created by the 
chastening down of passion : and figuratively at 
least, it may be said to make them conscious that 
" underneath them are the everlasting arms. " 

Here then in love, as the positive school at pre- 
sent offer it to us, are all these three characteris- 
tics to which that school, as we have seen, must 
renounce all right. It is characterised as conform- 
ing to some special and absolute standard, of 
which no positive account can be given ; the con- 
formity is inward, and so cannot be enforced; and 
for all that positive knowledge can show us, its 
importance may be a dream. 

We shall realise this better if we consider a love 
from which these three characteristics have, as far 
as possible, been abstracted — a love which pro- 
fesses frankly to rest upon its own attractions, 
and which repudiates all such epithets as worse 
or better. This will at once show us not only of 
what various developments the passion of love is 
capable, but also how false it is to imagine that 
the highest kind need naturally be the most at- 
tractive. 

I have quoted Othello, and Mrs. Craven's hero- 



122 



Is Life Worth Living? 



ine as types of love when religionised. We will 
go to the modern Parisian school for the type of 
love when dereligionised — a school which, start- 
ing from the same premisses as do the positive 
moralists, yet come to a practical teaching that is 
singularly different. And let us remember that 
just as the ideal we have been considering already, 
is the ideal most ardently looked to by one part 
of the world, so is the ideal we are going to con- 
sider now, looked to with an equal ardor by an- 
other part of the world. The writer in particular 
from whom I am about to quote has been one of 
the most popular of all modern romancers ; and 
has been hailed by men of the most fastidious 
culture as a preacher to these latter generations 
of a bolder and more worthy gospel. " This," 45, 
says one of the best known of our living poets, of 
the work that I select to quote from — 

" This is the golden book of spirit and sense, 
The holy writ of beauty." 

Of this " holy writ " the chief theme is love. Let 
us go on to see how love is there presented to us. 

"You know," says Theophile Gautier's best- 
known hero, in a letter to a friend, " you know 
the eagerness with which I have sought for physi- 
cal beauty, the importance I attach to outward 
form, and how the world I am in love with is the 
world that the eyes can see : or to put the matter 



* Mr. A. C. Swinburne. 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



123 



in more conventional language, I am so corrupt 
and blase that my faith in moral beauty is gone, 
and my power of striving after it also. I have 
lost the faculty to discern between good and evil, 
and this loss has well nigh brought me back to 
the ignorance of the child or savage. To tell the 
plain truth, nothing seems to me to be worthy 
either of praise or blame, and I am but little per- 
turbed by even the most abnormal actions. My 
conscience is deaf and dumb. Adultery seems to 
me the most commonplace thing possible. I see 
nothing shocking in a young girl selling herself. 
... I find that the earth is all as fair as heaven, 
and virtue for me is nothing but the perfection 
of form." " Many a time and long," he continues 
farther on, "have I paused in some cathedral, 
under the shadow of the marble foliage, when 
the lights were quivering in through the stained 
windows, when the organ unbidden made a low 
murmuring of itself, and the wind was breathing 
amongst the pipes ; and I hav • > plunged my gaze 
far into the pale blue depths o' die almond-shaped 
eyes of the Madonna. I havt followed with a ten- 
der reverence the curves of that wasted figure of 
hers, and the arch of her eyebrows, just visible and 
no more than that. I have admired her smooth 
and lustrous brow, her temples with their trans- 
parent chastity, and her cheeks shaded with a so- 
ber virginal color, more tender than the color of a 
peach-flower. I have counted one by one the fair 



124 



Is Life Worth Living? 



and golden lashes that threw their tremulous shade 
upon it. I have traced out with care in the sub- 
dued tone that surrounds her, the evanescent lines 
of her throat, so fragile and inclined so modestly. 
I have even lifted with an adventuring hand the 
folds of her tunic, and have seen unveiled that 
bosom, maiden and full of milk, that has never 
been pressed by any except divine lips. I have 
traced out the rare clear veins of it, even to their 
faintest branchings. I have laid my finger on it, 
to draw the white drops forth, of the draught of 
heaven. I have so much as touched with my lips 
the very bud of the rosa mystica. 

"Well, and I confess it honestly, all this im- 
material beauty, this thing so winged and so 
aerial that one knows well enough it is soon going 
to fly away from one, has never moved me to any 
great degree. I love the Venus Anadyomene bet- 
ter, better a thousand times. These old-world 
eyes, slightly raised at the corners ! these lips so 
pure and so firmly chiselled, so amorous, and so fit 
for kissing! this low, broad brow! these tresses 
with the curves in them of the sea water, and 
bound behind her head in a knot, negligently I 
these firm and shining shoulders ! this back, with 
its thousand alluring contours ! all these fair and 
rounded outlines, this air of superhuman vigor 
in a body so divinely feminine — all this enraptures 
and enchants me in a way of which you can have 
no idea— you the Christian and the philosopher. 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



125 



"Mary, despite the humble air affected by her, 
is a deal too haughty for me. It is as much as 
her foot does, swathed in its white coverings, if it 
just touches the earth, now purpling where the 
old serpent withes. Her eyes are the loveliest 
eyes in the world ; but they are always turned 
heavenwards, or else they are cast clown. They 
never look you, straight in the face. They have 
never served as the mirror of a human form. . . . 
Venus comes from the sea to take possession of 
the world, as a goddess who loves men should — 
quite naked, and quite alone. Earth is more to 
her liking than is Olympus, and amongst her 
lovers she has more men than gods. She drapes 
herself in no faint veils of mystery. She stands 
straight upright, her dolphin behind her, and her 
foot upon her opal-colored shell. The sun strikes 
full upon her smooth limbs, and her white hand 
holds in air the waves of her fair locks, which old 
father Ocean has sprinkled with his most perfect 
pearls. One can see her. She hides nothing; 
for modesty was only made for those who have 
no beauty. It is an invention of the modern 
world; the child of the Christian contempt for 
form and matter. 

" Oh ancient world ! all that you held in rever- 
ence is held in scorn by us. Thine idols are over- 
thrown in the dust; fleshless anchorites clad in 
rags and tatters, martyrs with the blood fresh on 
them, and their shoulders torn by the tigers of 



126 



Is Life Worth Living? 



thy circuses, Lave perched themselves on the 
pedestals of thy fair desirable gods. The Christ 
has enveloped the whole world in his winding 
sheet. . . . Oh purity, plant of bitterness, born on 
a blood-soaked soil, and whose degenerate and 
sickly blossom expands with difficulty in the dank 
shade of cloisters, under a chill baptismal rain ; 
rose without scent, and spiked all round with 
thorns, thou hast taken the place for us of the 
glad and gracious roses, bathed with nard and 
wine, of the dancing girls of Sybaris ! 

" The ancient world knew thee not, oh sterile 
flower! thou wast never enwoven in its chaplets of 
delirious perfume. . In that vigorous and healthy 
society they would have spurned thee under foot 
disdainfully. Purity, mysticism, melancholy — 
three words unknown to thee, three new maladies 
brought into our life by the Christ ! . . . For me, 
I look on woman in the old world manner, like a 
fair slave, made only for our pleasures. Chris- 
tianity, in my eyes, has clone nothing to rehabili- 
tate her. ... To say the truth, I cannot conceive 
for what reason there should be this desire in 
woman to be looked on as on a level with men. 
. . . I have made some love-verses in my time, or 
at least something that aspired to pass for such 
. . . and there is not a vestige in them of the 
modern feeling of love. . . . There is nothing there, 
as in all the love-poetry since the Christian era, of 
a soul which, because it loves, begr another soul 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



127 



to love it back again ; nothing there of a blue and 
shining lake, which begs a stream to pour itself 
into its bosom, that both together they may mir- 
ror the stars of heaven ; nothing there of a pair of 
ring-doves, opening their wings together, that they 
may both together fly to the same nest."* 

Such is the account the hero gives of the nature 
of his love for woman. Nor does he give this 
account regretfully, or think that it shows him to 
be in any diseased condition. It shows rather a 
return, on his part, to a health that others have 
lost. As he looks round upon the modern world 
and the purity that George Eliot says in her verses 
she would die for, " Woman/' he exclaims mourn- 
fully, " is become the symbol of moral and physi- 
cal beauty. The real fall of man was on the 
birthday of the babe of Bethlehem." t It will be 
instructive to notice further that these views are 
carried out by him to their full legitimate conse- 
quences, even though this, to some degree, is 
against his will. " Sometimes," he says, " I try 
to persuade myself that such passions are abom- 
inable, and I say as much to myself in as severe 
a way as I can. But the words come only from 
my lips. They are arguments that I make. They 
are not arguments that I feel. The thing in ques- 
tion really seems quite natural to me, and anyone 
else in my place would, it seems to me, do as I 
do."} 

* Mile, de Maupin, pp. 213-222. Ed. Paris. 1875. f/6., p. 223. J/6., p. 225, 



128 



Is Life Worth Living? 



Nor is this conception of love peculiar to the 
hero only. The heroine's conception is its exact 
counterpart, and exactly fits it. The heroine as 
completely as the hero has freed herself from any 
discernment between good and evil. She recoils 
from abnormal impurity no more than from nor- 
mal, and the climax of the book is her full indul- 
gence in both. 

Now here we have a specimen of love raised to 
intensity, but divested as far as possible of the 
religious element. I say divested as far as pos- 
sible, because even here, as I shall prove hereafter, 
the process is not complete, and something of 
religion is still left fermenting. But it is quite 
complete enough for our present purpose. It will 
remind us in the sharpest and clearest way that 
love is no force which is naturally constant in its 
development, or which if left to itself can be in 
any way a moral director to us. It will show us 
that many of its developments are what the 
moralist calls abominable, and that the very worst 
of these may perhaps be the most attractive, and 
be deliberately presented to us as such by men of 
the most elaborate culture. We shall thus see 
that love as a test of conduct, as an aim of life, 
or as an object of any heroic devotion, is not love 
in general, but love of a special kind, and that to 
fulfil this function it must not only be selected 
from the rest, but also removed from them, and 
set above them at a quite incalculable distance. 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



129 



And the kind thus chosen, let me repeat again 
(for this, though less obvious, is more important 
still), is not chosen because it is naturally intense, 
but it becomes intense because it is the chosen 
one. 

Here then lies the weak point in the position 
of the positive moralists, when they hold up such 
love to us as so supreme a treasure in life. They 
observe, and quite correctly, that it is looked upon 
as a treasure ; but the source of its preciousness 
is something that their system expressly takes 
from it. That choice among the loves, so solemn 
and so imperious and yet so tender, which de- 
scends like a tongue of flame upon the love it 
delights to honor; which fixes on a despised 
and a weak affection, taking it like Elisha from 
his furrows, or like David from his pastures, set- 
ting it above all its fellows, and making it at once 
a queen and prophetess — this is a choice that 
positivism has no power to make ; or which, if it 
makes, it makes only a caprice, or a listless pref- 
erence. It does not, indeed, confound pure love 
with impure, but it sets them on an equal footing ; 
and those who contend that the former under 
these conditions is intrinsically more attractive to 
to men than the latter, betray a most naive ignor- 
ance of what human nature is. Supposing, for 
argument's sake, that to themselves it may be so, 
this fact is not of the slightest use to them. It is 
merely the possession on their part of a certain 



130 



Is Life Worth Living f 



personal taste, which those who do not share it 
may regard as disease or weakness, and which 
they themselves can neither defend nor inculcate. 
It is true they may call their opponents hard 
names if they choose ; but their opponents can 
call them hard names back again; but in the 
absence of any common standard, the recrimina- 
tions on neither side can have the least sting in 
them. Could, however, any argument on suclTlSr^ 
matter be possible, it is the devotees of impurity 
that would have the strongest case ; for the plea- 
sures of indulgence are admitted by both sides, 
while the merits of abstention are admitted by 
only one. 

Let us go back, for instance, in connection with 
this matter, to what Professor Huxley has told 
us is the grand result of education. It leads us 
away, he says, from "the rank and steaming 
valleys of sense," up to the " highest good," which 
is "discerned by reason," "resting in eternal 
calm." And let us ask him again, what, as uttered 
by a positivist, these words can by any possibility 
mean. " The rank and steaming valleys of sense !" 
Why are they rank and steaming ? Or, if they 
are, why is that any condemnation of them ? Or, 
if we do condemn them, what else are we to praise? 
The entire raw material, not of our pleasures only, 
but of our knowledge also, is given us, say the 
positive school, by the senses. Surely then to 
condemn the senses must be to condemn life. Let 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 131 



us imagine Professor Huxley talking in this way 
to Theophile Gautier. Let us imagine him frown- 
ing grimly at the licentious Frenchman, and urg- 
ing him with all vehemence to turn to the highest 
good. The answer will at once be, "That is 
exactly, my dear Professor, what I do turn to. 
And, listen," he might say — the following is again 
a passage from his own writings — " to the way in 
which I figure the highest good to myself. It is 
a huge building, with its outer walls all blind and 
windowless ; a huge court within, surrounded by 
a colonnade of white marble; in the midst a musi- 
cal fountain with a jet of quick-silver in the Arab- 
ian fashion ; leaves of orange-trees and pome- 
granates placed alternately ; overhead the bluest 
of skies and the mellowest of suns ; great long- 
nosed greyhounds should be sleeping here and 
there ; from time to time barefoot negresses with 
golden ankle-rings, fair women servants wdiite and 
slender, and clad in rich strange garments, should 
pass between the hollow arches, basket on arm, 
or urn poised on head."* Three things give me 
pleasure, gold, marble, and purple — brilliance, 
mass, and color. These are the stuffs out of 
which my dreams are made; and all my ideal 
palaces are constructed of these materials, "t 
What answer could Professor Huxley make to 
this that would not seem to the other at once bar- 
barous and nunsensical? The best answer he 



* Mademoiselle de Maupin, p. 222. 



t Ibid., p. 211. 



132 



Is Life Worth Living? 



oula make would be simply, " I do not agree with 
you." And to this again the answer would at 
once be, " That is because you are still hampered 
by prejudices, whose only possible foundations we 
have both removed ; and because I am a man of 
culture, and you are not." 

Let us also consider again that other utterance 
of Professor Huxley's, with which I began this 
chapter. According to the positive view of morals, 
he says, those special sets of happiness that a 
moral system selects for us, have no more to do 
with any theory as to the reason of their selection, 
than a man's sight has to do with his theory of 
vision, or than the hot taste of ginger has to do 
with a knowledge of its analysis. That is a most 
clear and succinct statement of the whole positive 
position ; and we shall now be able to profit by 
its clearness, and to see how all that it does is to 
reveal confusion. In the first place, Professor 
Huxley's comparisons really illustrate the very 
fact that he designs them to invalidate. It is pre- 
cisely on his theory of vision that a man's sight 
practically does depend. All sight, so far as it 
conveys any meaning to him, is an act of inference ; 
and though generally this process may be so rapid 
that it is not perceived by him, yet the doubt 
often felt about distant or unusual objects will 
make him keenly conscious of it. "Whilst as to 
ginger and the taste produced by it, the moral 
question is not whether it is hot or not ; but 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



133 



whether or no it will be for our advantage to eat 
it ; and this resolves itself into two further ques- 
tions ; firstly, whether its heat is pleasant, and 
secondly, whether its heat is wholesome. On the 
first of these Professor Huxley throws no light 
whatever ; whilst as to the second, it really hangs 
entirely on the very point that he cited as indiffer- 
ent. We must have some knowledge, even though 
it be only vague and negative, of the nature of 
a food, before we know whether it will be well for 
us in the long run to habitually eat it, or to abstain 
from it. 

Let us apply this illustration to love. Professor 
Huxley's ginger shall stand for the sort of love he 
would most approve of; and love, as a whole, will 
be represented by a varied dessert, of which gin- 
ger is one of the dishes. Now what Professor 
Huxley has to do is to recommend this ginger, 
and to show that it is divided by an infinite gulf 
— say from prunes or from Huntley and Palmer's 
biscuits. But how is he to do this ? To say that 
ginger is hot is to sa}^ nothing. To many, that 
may condemn instead of recommending it : and 
they will have as much to say for their own tastes 
if they rejoin that prunes and biscuits are sweet. 
If he can prove to them that what they choose is 
unwholesome, and that if they eat it they will be 
too unwell to say their prayers, then, supposing 
they want to say their prayers, he will have gained 
his point. But if he cannot prove that it is un- 



134 



Is Life Worth Living? 



wholesome, or if his friends have no prayers to 
say, his entire recommendation dwindles to a 
declaration of his own personal taste. But in 
this case his whole tone will be different. There 
will be nothing in it of the moral imperative. He 
will be only laughed at and not listened to, if he 
proclaims his own taste in sweetmeats with all 
the thunders of Sinai. And the choice between 
the various kinds of love is, on positive principles, 
only a choice between sweetmeats. It is this, and 
nothing more than this, avowedly; and yet the 
positivists would keep for it the earnest language 
of the Christian, for whom it is a choice, not be- 
tween sweetmeats and sweetmeats, but between 
a confectioner's wafer and the Host. 

It may perhaps be urged by some that, accord- 
ing to this view of it, purity is degraded into a 
bitter something, which we only accept reluc- 
tantly, through fear of the consequences of its 
rdternatives. And it is quite true that a fear of 
the consequences of wrong love is inseparably 
connected with our sense of the value of right 
love. But this is a necessity of the case ; the 
quality of the right love is in no way lowered by 
it, and it will lead us to consider another import- 
ant point. 

It is impossible to hold that one thing is incal- 
culably better than others, without holding also 
that others are incalculably w^orse than it. Indeed, 
the surest test we can give of the praise we bestow 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



135 



on what we choose, is the measure of condemna- 
tion we bestow on what we reject. If we main- 
tain that virtuous love constitutes its own heaven, 
we must also maintain that vicious love constitutes 
its own hell. If we cannot do the last we certainly 
cannot do the first. And the positive school can 
do neither. It can neither elevate one kind of 
love nor depress the others ; and for this reason. 
The results of love in both cases are, according 
to their teaching, bounded by our present con- 
sciousness; and our present consciousness, di- 
vorced from all future expectation, has no room 
in it for so vast an interval as all moral systems 
postulate between the right love and the wrong. 
Indeed, if happiness be the test of right, it cannot, 
as a general truth, be said that they are practically 
separable at all. It is notorious that, as far as 
the present life goes, a man of even the vilest af- 
fections may effectually elude all pain from them. 
Sometimes they may injure his health, it is true; 
but they need not even do that; and if they do, 
it necessitates no moral condemnation of them, 
for many heroic labors would do just the same. 
Injury to the health, at any rate, is a mere acci- 
dent; so is also injury to the reputation; and 
conditions are easily conceivable by which both 
these dangers would be obviated. The supposed 
evils ol impurity have but a very slight reference 
to these. They depend, not on any present con- 
sciousness, but on the expectations of a future con- 



136 



Is Life Worth Living? 



sciousness — a consciousness that will reveal things 
to us hereafter which we can only augur here. 

" I do not know them now, but after death 
God knows I know the faces I shall see : 
Each one a murdered self with last low breath, 
4 1 am thyself ; what hast thou done to meV 
c And I, and I thyself ! ? lo each one saith, 
' And thou thyself, to all eternity. 3 "* 

Such is the expectation on which the supposed 
evils of impurity depend. According to positive 
principles, the expectation will never be fulfilled ; 
the evils therefore exist only in a diseased imag- 
ination. 

And with the beauty of purity the case is just 
the same. According to the view which the posi- 
tivists have adopted, so little counting the cost of 
it, a pure human affection is a union of two things. 
It is not a possession only, but a promise ; not a 
sentiment only, but a presentiment ; not a taste 
only, but a foretaste; and the chief sweetness 
said to be found in the former, is dependent alto- 
gether upon the latter. " Blessed are the pure in 
heart, for they shall see God," is the belief which, 
whether true or false as a fact, is implied in the 
whole modern cultus of love, and the religious 
reverence with which it has come to he regarded, 
[n no other way can we explain either its eclec- 
ticism or its supreme importance. Nor is the 
belief in question a thing that is implied only. 
Continually it is expressed also, and this even by 

* Dante Gabriel itosetti. 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



writers who theoretically repudiate it. Goethe, 
for instance, cannot present the moral aspects of 
Margaret's love-story without assuming it. And 
George Eliot has been obliged to pre-suppose it 
in her characters, and to exhibit the virtues she 
regards as noblest, on the pedestal of a belief that 
she regards as most irrational. But its comple- 
test expression is naturally to be found elsewhere. 
Here, for instance, is a verse of Mr. Robert 
Browning's, who, hoAvever we rank him otherwise, 
is perhaps unrivalled for his subtle analysis of the 
emotions : 

" Dear, when our one soul understands 

The great soul that makes all things new, 

When earth breaks up, and heaven expands, 
How will the change strike me and you, 

In the house not made with hands V 

Here, again, is another, in which the same senti- 
ment is presented in a somewhat different form : 

"Is there nought better than to enjoy 1 

No deed which done, will make time break, 
Letting us pent-up creatures through 
Into eternity, our clue — 
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ ? 

•* No wise beginning, here and now, 

Which cannot grow complete (earth's feat) 
And heaven must finish there and then? 
No tasting earth's true food for men, 
Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet V 

To the last of these verses a singular parallel may 
be found in the works of a much earlier, and a 
very different writer, only the affection there 



133 



Is Life Worth Living? 



dealt with is filial and not marital. In spite of 
this difference, however, it will still be much in 
point. 

" The day was fast approaching," says Augus- 
tine, " whereon my mother was to depart this life, 
when it happened, Lord, as I believe by thy special 
ordinance, that she and I were alone together, 
leaning in a certain window that looked into the 
garden of the house, where we were then staying 
at Ostia. We were talking together alone, very 
sweetly, and were wondering what the life would 
be of God's saints in heaven. And when our 
discourse was come to that point, that the highest 
delight and brightest of all the carnal senses 
seemed not fit to be so much as named with that 
life's sweetness, we, lifting ourselves yet more 
ardently to the Unchanging One, did by degrees 
pass through all things bodily — beyond the heaven 
even, and the sun and stars. Yea, we soared 
higher yet by inward musing. We came to our 
own minds, and we passed beyond them, that we 
might reach that place of plenty, where Thou feed- 
est Israel forever with the food of truth, and where 
life is the Wisdom by which all these things are 
made. And whilst we were discoursing and pant- 
ing after her, we slightly touched on her with the 
whole effort of our heart ; and we sighed, and 
there left bound the first fruits of the spirit, and 
came back again to the sounds of our own mouths 
— to our own finite language. And what we then 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



139 



said was in this wise : If to any the tumult of the 
flesh were hushed, hushed the images of the earth 
and air and waters, hushed too the poles of 
heaven, yea the very soul be hushed to herself, and 
by not thinking on self transcend self, hushed all 
dreams and imaginary revelations, every tongue 
and every sign, and whatever exists only in transi- 
tion — if these should all be hushed, having only 
roused our ears to Him that made them, and He 
speak alone, not by them but by Himself, that we 
might hear His word, not through any tongue of 
flesh, nor angel's voice, nor sound of thunder, nor 
in the dark riddle of a similitude, but might hear 
Him whom in these things we love — His very self 
without any aid from these (even as we two for 
that brief moment had touched the eternal Wis- 
dom) — could this be continued on, and other 
visions, far unlike it, be withdrawn, and this one 
ravish and absorb and wrap up its beholders amid 
these inward joys, so that life might be forever 
like that one moment of understanding, were not 
this, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord ? And 
when shall that be? Shall it be when we rise 
again, but shall not all be changed?""* 

In this exceedingly striking passage we have 
the whole case before us. The belief on which 
modern love rests, and which makes it so single 



* Aug. Conf., lib. ix. In the earlier part of the passage the extreme 
redundancy of the original ha3 been curtailed somewhat. In the rendering 
here given I have to a great extent followed JJr. Pusey. 



140 



Is Life Worth Living? 



and so sacred is, as it were, drawn for us on an 
enlarged scale : and we see that it is a belief 
to which positivism has no right. The belief, in- 
deed, is by no means a modern thing. Rudiments 
of it on the contrary are as old as man himself, 
and may represent a something that inheres in his 
very nature. But none the more for this will it 
be of any service to the positivist ; for this some- 
thing can only be of power or value if the pro- 
phecy it inevitably developes into be regarded as 
a true one. In the consciousness of the ancient 
world it lay undeciphered like the dark sentence 
of an oracle ; and though it might be revered by 
some, it could not be denied by any. But its 
meaning is now translated for us, and there is a 
new factor in the case. "We now can deny it; 
and if we do, its whole power is paralysed. 

This when once recognised must be evident 
enough. But a curious confusion of thought has 
prevented the positive school from seeing it. 
They have imagined that what religion adds to 
love is the hope of prolongation only, not of devel- 
opment also; and thus we find Professor Huxley 
curtly dismissing the question by saying that the 
quality of such a pleasure " is obviously in no 
way affected by the abbreviation or prolongation 
of our conscious life." How utterly this is beside 
the point may be shown instantly by a very simple 
example. A painter, we will say, inspired with 
some great conception, sets to work at a picture, 



Love as a Test of Goodness. 



141 



and finds a week of the intensest happiness in 
preparing his canvas and laying his first colors. 
Now the happiness of that week is, of course, a 
fact for him. It would not have been greater had 
it lasted a whole fortnight ; and it would not have 
been less had he died at the week's end. But 
though obviously, as Professor Huxley says, it in 
no way depends on its prolongation, what it does 
depend on is the belief that it will be prolonged, 
and that in being prolonged it will change its 
character. It depends on the belief on the paint- 
er's part that he will be able to continue his paint- 
ing, and that as he continues it, his picture will 
advance to completion. The positivists have con- 
fused the true saying that the pleasure of painting 
one picture does not depend on the fact that we 
shall paint many, with the false saying that the 
pleasure of beginning that one does not depend 
on the belief that we shall finish it. On this last 
belief it is plain that the pleasure does depend, 
largely if not entirely ; and it is precisely this last 
belief that positivism takes away. 

To return again, then, to the subject of human 
love — we are now in a position to see that, as of- 
fered us at present by the positive school of moral- 
ists, it cannot, properly speaking, be called a posi- 
tive pleasure at all, but that, it is still essentially 
a religious one; and that when the religious 
element is eradicated, its entire character will 
change. It may be, of course, contended that the 



142 



Is Life Worth Living? 



religious element is ineradicable : but this is sim- 
ply either to call positivism an impossibility, or 
religion an incurable disease. Here, however, we 
are touching on a side issue, which I shall by and 
by return to, but which is at present beside the 
point. My aim now is not to argue either that 
positivism can or cannot be accepted by humanity, 
but to show what, if accepted, it will have to offer 
us. I wish to point out the error, for instance, 
of such writers as George Eliot, who, whilst deny- 
ing the existence of any sun-god in the heavens, 
are yet perpetually adoring the sunlight on the 
earth ; who profess to extinguish all fire on prin- 
eiple, and then offer us boiling water to supply its 
place; or who, sending love to us as a mere Cas- 
sandra, continue to quote as Scripture the pro- 
phecies they have just discredited. 

Thus far what we have seen is this. Love as a 
positive pleasure, if it be ever reduced to such, 
will be a very different thing from what our posi- 
tivist moralists at present see it to be. It will 
perform none of those functions for which they 
now look to it. It will no longer supply them, as 
now, with any special pinnacle on which human 
life may raise itself. The one type of it that is 
at present on an eminence will sink to the same 
Level as the others. All these will be offered to 
us indiscriminately, and our choice between them 
will have no moral value. None of the ethical 
epithets by which these varieties are at present 



Life as its own Reivard. 



143 



so sharply distinguished from each other will have 
any virtue left in them. Morality in this connec- 
tion will be a word without a meaning. 

I have as yet dealt only with one of those re- 
sources, which have been supposed to impart to 
life a positive general value. This one, however, 
has been the most important and the most com- 
prehensive of all ; and its case will explain that 
of the others, and perhaps, with but few excep- 
tions, include them. One or two of these others 
I shall by and by treat separately ; but we will 
first inquire into the results on life of the change 
we have been considering already. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD. 
"Tfin this life only we have hope — 99 

HAT we have now before us is a certain sub- 



' * traction sum. We have to take from life one 
of its strongest present elements ; and see as well 
as we can what will then be the remainder. Ad 
exact answer we shall, of course, not expect ; but 
we can arrive at an approximate one without much 
difficulty. 




144 



Is Life Worth Living? 



What we have to subtract has been shown in 
the previous chapter; but it may again be de- 
scribed briefly in the following way. Life in its 
present state, as we have just seen, is a union of 
two sets of feelings, and of two kinds of happi- 
ness, and is partly the sum of the two, and partly 
a compromise between them. Its resources, by 
one classification, are separable into two groups, 
according as in themselves they chance .to repel 
or please us; and the most obvious measure of 
happiness would seem to be nothing more than 
our gain of what is thus pleasant, and our shirk- 
ing of what is thus painful. But if we examine 
life as it actually exists about us, we shall see 
that this classification has been traversed by an- 
other. Many things naturally repellent have 
received a supernatural blessing; many things 
naturally pleasant have received a supernatural 
curse; and thus our highest happiness is often 
composed of pain, and our profoundest misery is 
nearly always based on pleasure. Accordingly, 
whereas happiness naturally would seem the test 
of right, right has come sup ernatur ally to be the 
test of happiness. And so completely is this 
notion engrained in the world's consciousness, 
that in all our deeper views of life, no matter 
whether we be saints or sinners, right and wrong 
are the things that first appeal to us, not happi- 
ness and misery. A certain supernatural moral 
judgment, in fact, has become a primary faculty 



Life as its oivn Reward. 



145 



with us, and it mixes with every estimate we form 
cf the world around us. 

It is this faculty that positivism, if accepted 
fully, must either destroy or paralyse ; it is this, 
therefore, that in imagination we must now try 
to eliminate. To do this — to sec what will be 
left in life to us, without this faculty, we must 
first see in general, how much is at present de- 
pendent on it. 

This might at first sight seem a hard task to 
perform , the interests we shall have to deal with 
are so many and so various. But the difficulty 
may be eluded. I have already gone to litera- 
ture for examples of special feelings on the part 
of individuals, and under certain circumstances. 
We will now go to it lor a kindred, though not for 
the same assistance ; and for this end wo shall 
approach it in a slightly different way. What wo 
did before was this. We took certain works of 
literary art, and selecting as it were, one or two 
special patches of color, we analysed the com- 
position of these. What we shall now do will bo 
to take the pictures as organic wholes, with a 
view to analysing the effect of them as pictures — 
the harmony or the contrast of their colors, and 
the massing of their lights and shadows. If wo 
reflect for a moment what art is — literary and 
poetical art in particular — we shall at once seo 
how, examined in this way, it will be of use to us. 
In the first place, then, what is art ? and what i3 



Js Life Worth Living? 



the reason that it pleases us ? It is a rejection, 
a reproduction of the pleasures of life, and is alto- 
gether relative to these, and dependent on them. 
We should, for instance, take no interest in por- 
traits unless we took some interest in the human 
face. We should take none in statues if we took 
none in the human form. We must know some- 
thing of love as a feeling, or we should never care 
for love-songs. Art may send us back to these 
with intenser appreciation of them, but we must 
bring to art from life the appreciation we want 
intensified. Art is a factor in common human 
happiness, because by its means common men are 
made partakers in the vision of uncommon men. 
Great art is a speculum reflecting life as the 
keenest eyes have seen it. All its forms and 
imagery are of value only as this. Taken by 
themselves, " the best in this kind are but sha- 
dows." We have to "piece out their imperfec- 
tions with our thoughts;" "imagination has to 
amend them," and " it must be our imagination, 
not theirs."* "In examining a work of art, then, 
we are examining life itself; or rather, in examin- 
ing the interest which we take in a work of art, 
in examining the reasons why we think it beauti- 
ful, or great, or interesting, we are examining our 

*" Hippohjta. — This is the silliest stuff I ever heard. Theseus. — The best 
in this kind are but shadows, and the worst no worse, if imagination amend 
them. Hippolyla. — It must be your imagination then, nut theirs." — Mid- 
summer's Niyktfs Dream, J^ct V. 

"Viece out our imperfections with your thoughts." — Prologue to Henry V. 



Uje as its own Reward. 



147 



own feelings as to the realities represented by it. 

And now remembering this, let us turn to cer- 
tain of the world's greatest works of art — I mean 
its dramas : for just as poetry is the most articu- 
late of all the arts, so is the drama the most com- 
prehensive form of poetry. In the drama we 
have the very thing w^e are now in want of. We 
have life as a whole — that complex aggregate of 
details, which forms, as it were, the mental land- 
scape of existence, presented to us in a " ques- 
tionable shape," at once concentrated and inten- 
sified. And it is no exaggeration to say that the 
reasons why men think life worth living, can be 
all found in the reasons why they think a great 
drama great. 

Let us turn, then, to some of the greatest works 
of Sophocles, of Shakespeare, and of Goethe, and 
consider briefly how these present life to us. 
Let us take Macbeth, Hamlet, Measure for Mea- 
sure, and Faust. We have here five presentations 
of life, under what confessedly are its most strik- 
ing aspects, and with such interests as men have 
been able to find in it, raised to their greatest in- 
tensity. Such, at least, is the way in which these 
works are regarded, and it is only in virtue of this 
estimate that they are called great. Now, in pro- 
ducing this estimate, what is the chief faculty 
in us that they appeal to ? It will need but 
little thought to show us that they appeal prim- 
arily to the supernatural moral judgment ; that 



148 



Is Life Worth Living? 



this judgment is perpetually being expressed ex- 
plicitly in the works themselves ; and, which is 
far more important, that it is always pre-supposed 
in us. In other words, these supreme presenta- 
tions of life are presentations of men struggling, 
or failing to struggle, not after natural happiness, 
but after supernatural right ; and it is always 
pre-supposed on our part that we admit this 
struggle to be the one important thing. And this 
importance, we shall see further, is based, not on 
the external and the social consequences of con- 
duct, but essentially and primarily on its internal 
and its personal consequences. 

In Macbeth, for instance, the main incident, the 
tragic-coloring matter of the drama, is the murder 
of Duncan. But in what aspect of this does the 
real tragedy lie ? Not in the fact that Duncan is 
murdered, but in the fact that Macbeth is the 
murderer. What appals us, what purges our 
passions with pity and with terror as we con- 
template it, is not the external, the social effect 
of the act, but the personal, the internal effect of 
it. As for Duncan, he is in his grave ; after life's 
fitful fever he sleeps well. What our minds are 
made to dwell upon is ^ot that Duncan shall 
sleep for ever, but that ivlacbeth shall sleep no 
more ; it is not the extinction of a dynasty, but 
the ruin of a character. 

We see in Hamlet precisely the same thing. 
The action there that our interest centres in, if 



Lije as tts own Hew rd. 



149 



the hero's struggle to conform to an internal per- 
sonal standard of right, utterly irrespective of use 
to others, or of natural happiness to himself. In 
the course of this struggle, indeed, he does nothing 
but ruin the happiness around him ; and this ruin 
adds greatly to the pathos of the spectacle. But 
we are not indignant with Hamlet, as being the 
cause of it. We should have been indignant 
rather with him if the case had been reversed, 
and if instead of sacrificing social happiness for 
the sake of personal right, he had sacrificed per- 
sonal right for the sake of social happiness. 

In Antigone the case is just the same, only there 
its nature is yet more distinctly exhibited. We have 
for the central interest the same personal struggle 
after right, not after use or happiness ; and one of 
the finest passages in that whole marvellous drama 
is a distinct statement by the heroine that this is 
so. The one rule she says, that she is resolved to 
live by, and not live by only, but if needs be to 
die for, is no human rule, is no standard of man's 
devising, nor can it be modified to suit our chang 
ing needs ; but it is 

" The unwritten and the enduring laws of God, 
Which are not of to-day nor yesterday, 
Bat live from everlasting, and none breathes 
Who knows them, whence begotten. " 

In Measure for Measure and Faust we can see 
the matter reduced to a narrower issue still. In 



id© Is Life Worth Living? 



both, these plays we can see at once that one 
moral judgment at least, not to name others, is 
before all things presupposed in us. This is a 
hard and fixed judgment with regard to female 
chastity, and the supernatural value of it. It is 
only because we assent to this judgment that Isa- 
bella is heroic to us ; and primarily for the same 
reason that Margaret is unfortunate. Let us 
suspend this judgment for a moment, and what 
will become of these two dramas ? The terror 
and the pity of them will vanish instantly like a 
dream. The fittest name for both of them will be 
"Much Ado about Nothing" 

It will thus be seen, and the more we consider 
the matter the more plain will it become to us — 
that in all such art as that which we have been 
now considering, the premiss on which all its 
power and greatness rests is this : The grand rela- 
tion of man is not first to his brother men, but to 
something else, that is beyond humanit)^ — that is 
at once without and also beyond himself; to this 
first, and to his brother men through this. We 
are not our own; w^e are bought with a price. 
Our bodies are God's temples, and the joy and 
the terror of life depends on our keeping these 
temples pure, or defiling them. Such are the 
solemn and profound beliefs, whether conscious 
or unconscious, on which all the higher art of the 
world has based itself. All the profundity and 
solemnity of it is borrowed from these, and exists 



Lije as its own Re ward. 



151 



for us in exact proportion to the intensity with 
which we hold them. 

Nor is this true of sublime and serious art only. 
It is true of cynical, profligate, and concupiscent 
art as well. It is true of Congreve as it is true 
of Sophocles ; it is true of Mademoiselle de Mau- 
pin as it is true of ' Measure for Measure. This 
art differs from the former in that the end pre- 
sented in it as the object of struggle is not only 
not the morally right, but is also to a certain ex- 
tent essentially the morally wrong. In the case 
of cynical and profligate art this is obvious. For 
such art does not so much depend on the substi- 
tution of some new object, as in putting insult on 
the present one. It does not make right and 
wrong change places ; on the contrary it care 
fully keeps them where they are ; but it insults 
the former by transferring its insignia to the lat- 
ter. It is not the ignoring of the right, but the 
denial of it. Cynicism and profligacy are essen- 
tially the spirits that deny, but they must retain 
the existing affirmations for their denial to prey 
upon. Their function is not to destroy the good, 
but to keep it in lingering torture. It is a kind 
of spiritual bear-baiting. They hate the good, 
and its existence piques them; but they must 
know that the good exists none the less. " I'd 
no sooner," says one of Congreve's characters, 
" play with a man that slighted his ill-fortune, thai) 
I d make love to a woman who undervalued the 



152 



Is Life Worth Living? 



loss of her reputation." In this one sentence is 
contained the whole secret of profligacy ; and 
profligacy is the same as cynicism, only it is cyn- 
icism sensualised. Now we have in the above 
sentence the exact counterpart to the words of 
Antigone that 1 have already quoted. For just 
as her life lay in conformity to " The unwritten, 
and the enduring laws of God," so does the life of 
the profligate lie in the violation of them. To 
each the existence of laws is equally essential. 
For profligacy is not merely the gratification o* 
the appetites, but the gratification of them at the 
expense of something else. Beasts are not profli- 
gate. We cannot have a profligate goat. 

In what I have called concupiscent art, the caso 
might seem different, and to a certain extent it 
is so. The objects of struggle that we are there 
presented with are meant to be presented as plea- 
sures, not in defiance of right and wrong, but in- 
dependently of them. The chief of these, indeed, 
as Thcophile Gautier has told us, are the physical 
endearments of a man and a woman, with no other 
qualification than that they are both of them 
young and beautiful. But though this art pro- 
fesses to be thus independent of the moral judg- 
ment, and to trust for none of its effects to the 
discernment between good and evil, this really is 
very far from being the case. Let us turn once 
again to the romance we have already quoted 
from. The hero says, as we have seen already, 



Life as its own Reward. 



153 



that he has completely lost the power of discern- 
ment in question. Now, even this, as might be 
shown easily, is not entirely true ; for argument's 
sake, however, we may grant him that it is so. 
The real point in the matter to notice is that he 
is at any rate conscious of the loss. He is a man 
tin^linGf with the excitement of having cast off 
some burden. The burden may be gone, but it 
is still present in the sharp effects of its absence. 
He is a kind of moral poacher, who, though he 
may not live by law, takes much of his life's tone 
from the sense that he is eluding it. His plea- 
sures, though pleasurable in themselves, yet have 
this quality heightened by the sense of contrast. 
" I am at any rate not virtuous," his mistress says 
to him, "and that is always something gained/' 
George Eliot says of Maggie Tulliver, that slu^ 
liked her aunt Pullet chiefly because she was not 
her aunt Gleg. Theophile Gautier's hero likes 
the Venus Anadyomene, partly at least, because 
she is not the Madonna. 

Nay, let us even descend to worse spectacles— 
to the sight of men struggling for enjoyments that 
are yet more obviously material, more devoid yet 
of any trace of mind or morals, and we shall see 
plainly, if we consult the mirror of art, that the 
moral element is present even here. We shall 
trace it even in such abnormal literature of indul- 
gence as the erotic work commonly ascribed to 
Meursius. We shall trace it in the orgies of 



154 



Is Life Worth Living? 



Tiberius at Capri ; or of Quartilla, as Petronius 
describes them, at N eapolis. It is like a ray of 
light coming in at the top of a dark cavern, whose 
inmates see not it, but by it; and which only 
brings to them a consciousness of shadow. It is 
this supernatural element that leavens natural 
passion, and gives its mad rage to it. It creates 
for it " a twilight where virtues are vices." The 
pleasures thus sought for are supposed to enthral 
men not in proportion to their intensity (for this 
through all their varieties would be probably 
nearly equal) but in proportion to their lowness 
—to their sullying power. Degradation is the 
measure of enjoyment ; or rather it is an increas- 
ing numeral by which one constant figure of en- 
joyment is multiplied. 

" Ah, where shall we go then, for pastime, 
If the worst that can be has been done?" 

This is the great question of the votaries of such 

joys as these."" 

Thus if we look at life in the mirror of art, we 
shall see how the supernatural is ever present to 
us. If we climb up into heaven it is there ; if we 
go down into hell it is there also. We shall see 
it at the bottom of those two opposite sets of 
pleasures, to the one or the other of which all 
human pleasures belong. The source of one is 

* Seneca says of virtue, " Non quia delected placet, sed quia placet dclcctat." 
Of vice in the same way we may say, "Non quia delectat puclet, sed quia 
pudet delectat." 



Life as its oivn Reward. 



155 



an impassioned struggle after the supernatural 
right, or an impassioned sense of rest upon attain- 
ing it ; the source of the other is the sense of 
revolt against it, which in various ways flatters 
or excites us. In both cases the supernatural 
moral judgment is the sense appealed to, pri- 
marily in the first case, and secondarily if not pri- 
marily in the second. All the life about us is 
colored by this, and naturally if this be destroyed 
or wrecked, the whole aspect of life will change 
for us. "What then will this change be ? Look- 
ing still into the mirror of art, the general char- 
acter of it will be very readily perceptible. I 
noticed just now, in passing, how Measure for 
Measure and Faust would suffer in their meaning 
and their interest, by the absence on our part 
of a certain moral judgment. They would be- 
come like a person singing to a deaf audience — a 
series of dumb grimaces with no meaning in them. 
The same thing is equally true in all the other 
cases. Antigone's heroism will evaporate ;* she 
will be left obstinate only. The lives of Macbeth 
and Hamlet will be tales of little meaning for us 
though the words are strong. They will be full 
of sound and fury, but they will signify nothing. 
What they produce in us will be not interest but 
a kind of wondering weariness — weariness at the 
w r eary fate of men who could " think so brain- 



*It will be of course recollected that in this abstraction of the moral sense* 
we have to abstract it from the characters as well as ourselves. 



l. r )fl gf 

sickly of things." So in like manner will all ths 
emphasis and elaboration in the literature of sen- 
suality become a weariness without meaning, also. 
Congreve's caustic wit will turn to spasmodic 
truism; and Theophile Gautier's excess of erotic 
ardor, into prolix and fantastic affectation. All 
its sublimity, its brilliance, and a large part of its 
interest, depend in art on the existence of the 
moral sense, and would in its absence be abso- 
lutely unproducible. The reason of this is plain. 
The natural pains and pleasures of life, merely 
manipulated by the imagination and the memory, 
have too little variety or magnitude in them with- 
out further aid. Art without the moral sense to 
play upon, is like a pianist whose keyboard is re- 
duced to a single octave. 

And exactly the same will be the case with life. 
Life will lose just the same qualities that art will 
— neither more nor less. There will be no intro- 
duction of any new interests, but merely the 
elimination of certain existing ones. The sub- 
traction of the moral sense will not revolutionise 
human purposes, but simply make them listless. 
It will reduce to a parti-colored level the whole 
field of pains and pleasures. The moral element 
gives this level a new dimension. Working under- 
neath it as a subterranean force, it convulses and 
divides its surface. Here vast areas subside into 
valleys and deep abysses ; there mountain peaks 
shoot up heavenwards. Mysterious shadows be- 



Life as its oivn Reivard. 



157 



gin to throng the hollows ; new tints and half- 
tints flicker and shift everywhere ; mists hang 
floating over ravines and precipices : the vegeta- 
tion grows more various, here slenderer, there 
richer and more luxuriant ; whilst high over all, 
bright on the topmost summits, is a new strange 
something — the white snows of purity, catching 
the morning streaks on them of a brighter day, 
that has never as yet risen upon the world below. 

With the subtraction, or nullifying, of the moral 
force, all this will go. The mountains will sink, 
the valleys be filled up; all will be once more 
dead level — still indeed parti-colored, but without 
light and shadow, and with the colors reduced in 
number, and robbed of all their vividness. The 
chiaro-oscuro will have gone from life ; the moral 
landscape, whose beauty and grandeur is at pre- 
sent so much extolled, will have dissolved like an 
insubstantial pageant. Vice and virtue will be 
set before us in the same gray light ; every deeper 
feeling either of joy or sorrow, of desire or of 
repulsion, will lose its vigor, and cease any more 
to be resonant. 

It may be said indeed, and very truly, that 
under favorable circumstances there must always 
remain a joy in the mere act of living, in the exer- 
cising of the bodily functions, and in the exciting 
and appeasing of the bodily appetites. Will any- 
thing, it may be asked, for instance, rob the sun- 
shine of its gladness, or deaden the ^jtal influence 



106 



Ts Life Worth Living? 



of a spring morning ? — when the sky is a cloudless 
blue, and the sea is like a wild hyacinth, when the 
pouring brooks seem to live as they sparkle, and 
the early air amongst the woodlands has the 
breath in it of unseen violets ? All this, it is quite 
true, will be left to us ; this and a great deal more. 
This, however, is but one side of the picture. If 
life has its own natural gladness which is ex- 
pressed by spring, it has also its own natural sad- 
ness which is expressed by winter ; and the worth 
of life, if this is all we trust to, will be as various 
and as changing as the weather is. But this is 
not all. Even this worth, such as it is, depends 
for us at present, in a large measure, upon reli- 
gion — not directly indeed, but indirectly. This 
life of air, and nerve, and muscle, this buoyant 
consciousness of joyous and abounding health, 
which seems so little to have connection with 
faiths or theories, is for us impregnated with a 
life that is impregnated with these, and thus their 
subtle influence pervades it everywhere. There 
is no impulse from without which stirs or excites 
the senses, that does not either bring to us, or 
send us on to, a something beyond itself: In 
each of these pleasures that seems to us so simple, 
floats a swarm of hopes and memories, like the 
gnats in a summer twilight. There is not a sight, 
a sound, a smell, not a breath from sea or garden, 
that is not full of them, and on which, busy and 
numberless, they are not wafted into us. And 



Life as its own Reward. 



159 



each of these volatile presences brings the notions 
of right and wrong with it ; and it is these that 
make sensuous life tingle with so strange and so 
elaborate an excitement. Indirectly then, though 
not directly, the mere joy in the act of living will 
suffer from the loss of religion, in the same man- 
ner, though perhaps not in the same degree, as 
the other joys will. It will not lose its existence, 
but it will lose zest. The fabric of its pleasures 
will of course remain what it ever was ; but its 
brightest inhabitants will have left it. It will be 
as desolate as Mayfair in September, or* as a de- 
serted college during a long vacation. 

We may here pause in passing, to remark on 
the shallowness of that philosophy of culture, to 
be met with in certain quarters, which, whilst ad- 
mitting all that can be said as to the destruction 
for us of any moral obligation, yet advises us still 
to profit by the variety of moral distinctions. 
"Each moment," says Mr. Pater for instance, 
" some form grows perfect in hand or face ; some 
tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest ; 
some mood of passion or insight or intellectual 
excitement, is irresistibly real and attractive for 
us." And thus, he adds, " while all melts under 
our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite pas- 
sion, or any contribution to knowledge, that seems 
by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a mo- 
ment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, 
strange flowers, and curious odors, or the work 



160 



Is Life Worth Living ? 



of the artist's hand, or the face of one's friend.* 
It is plain that this positive teaching of culture is 
open to the same objections, and is based on the 
same fallacy, as the positive teaching of morals. 
It does not teach us, indeed, to let right and 
wrong guide us in the choice of our pleasures, in 
the sense that we should choose the one sort and 
eschew the other ; but teaching us to choose the 
two, in one sense indifferently, it yet teaches us 
to choose them as distinct and contrasted things. 
It teaches us in fact to combine the two fruits 
without confusing their flavors. But in the case 
of good and evil, as has been seen, this is quite 
impossible ; for good is only good as the thing 
that ought to be chosen ; evil is only evil as the 
thing that ought not to be chosen ; and the only 
reasons that could justify us in combining them 
would altogether prevent our distinguishing them. 
The teachings of positive culture, in fact, rest on 
the naive supposition that shine and shadow, as 
it were, are portable things ; and that we can 
take bright objects out of the sunshine, and dark 
objects out of the shadow, and setting them both 
together in the difiused gray light of a studio, 
make a magical mosaic out of them, of gloom and 
glitter. Or such teachings, to put the matter yet 
more simply, are like telling us to pick a primrose 
at noonday, and to set it by our bedside for a 
niirht-liuht. 

It is plain therefore that, in that loss of zest 



Life as its own Reward 



161 



and interest, which the deadening of the moral 
sense, as we have seen, must bring to life, we shall 
get no help there. The massy fabric of which 
saints and heroes were the builders, will never 
be re-elected by this mincing moral dandyism. 

But there is another last resource of the modern 
school, which is far more worthy of attention, and 
which, being entirely sui generis, I have reserved 
to treat of here. That resource is the devotion 
to truth as truth ; not for the sake of its conse- 
quences, but in scorn of them. Here we are told 
we have at least one moral end that can never be 
taken away from us. It will still survive to give 
life a meaning, a dignity, and a value, even should 
the pursuit of it prove destructive to all the others. 
The language used by the modern school upon 
this subject is very curious and instructive. I 
will take two typical instances. The common 
argument, says Dr. Tyndall, in favor of belief is 
the comfort and the gladness that it brings us, its 
redemption of life, in fact, from that dead and 
dull condition we have been just considering. 
" To this," he says, " my reply is that I choose the 
nobler part of Emerson when, after various dis- 
enchantments, he exclaimed ( I covet truth !' The 
gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who 
is really competent to say this." The following 
sentences are Professor Huxley's : " If it is demon- 
strated to me," he says, " that without this or that 

theological dogma the human race will lapse into 
10 



162 



Is Life Worth Limng? 



bipedal cattle, more brutal than the beasts by 
reason of their greater cleverness, my next ques- 
tion is to ask for the proof of the dogma. If this 
^roof is forthcoming, it is my conviction that no 
drowning sailor ever clutched a hencoop more 
tenaciously than mankind will hold by such dogma, 
whatever it may be. But if not, then I verily be- 
lieve that the human race will go its own evil 
way ; and my only consolation lies in the reflec- 
tion that, however bad our posterity may become, 
so long as they hold by the plain rule of not pre- 
tending to believe what they have no reason to 
believe, because it may be to their advantage so 
to pretend, they will not have reached the lowest 
depths of immorality." I will content myself 
with these two instances, but others of a similar 
kind might be multiplied indefinitely. 

Now by a simple substitution of terms, such 
language as this will reveal at once one important 
fact to us. According to the avowed principles 
of positive morality, morality has no other test 
but happiness. Immorality, therefore, can have 
no conceivable meaning but unhappiness, or at 
least the means to it, which in this case are hardly 
distinguishable from the end ; and thus, accord- 
ing to the above rigid reasoners, the human race 
will not have reached the lowest depths of misery 
so long as it rejects the one thing which ex hypo- 
tlmi might render it less miserable. Either then 
all this talk about truth must really be so much 



Life as its own Reward. 



163 



irrelevant nonsense, or else, if it be not nonsense, 
the test of conduct is something distinct from 
happiness. The question before us is a plain 
one, which may be answered in one of two ways, 
but which positivism cannot possibly answer in 
both. Is truth to be sought only because it con- 
duces to happiness, or is happiness only to be 
sought for when it is based on truth ? In the lat- 
ter case truth, not happiness, is the test of conduct. 
Are our positive moralists prepared to admit this ? 
If so, let them explicitly and consistently say so. 
Let them keep this test and reject the other, for 
the two cannot be fused together. 

o£os t a\et<£a r ey^cas tglvtw Kvrei 
Bl^oqtoltovvt av ov <fii\oiv 77pOS€w£~Ol<Z. 

This inconsistency is here, however, only a side 
point — a passing illustration of the slovenliness 
of the positivist logic. As far as my present 
argument goes, we may let this pass altogether, 
and allow the joint existence of these mutually 
exclusive ends. What I am about to do is to show 
that on positive grounds the last of these is more 
hopelessly inadequate than the first— that truth 
as a moral end has even more of religion in its 
composition than happiness, and that when this 
religion goes, its value will even more hopelessly 
evaporate. 

- At first sight this may seem impossible. The 
devotion to truth may seem as simple as it is 



164 



Is Life Worth Living? 



sacred. JBut if we consider the matter further 
we shall soon think differently. To begin then ; 
truth, as the positivists speak of it, is plainly a 
thing that is to be worshipped in two ways — firstly 
by its discovery, and secondly by its publication. 
Thus Professor Huxley, however much it may 
pain him, will not hide from himself the fact that 
there is no God ; and however bad this knowledge 
may be for humanity, his highest and most sacred 
duty still consists in imparting it. Now why 
should this be ? I ask. It is simply because the 
fact in question is the truth ? That surely can- 
not be so, as a few other examples will show us. 
A man discovers that his wife has been seduced 
by his best friend. Is there anything very high 
or very sacred in that discovery ? Having made 
it, does he feel any consolation in the knowledge 
that it is the entire truth ? And will the " glad- 
ness of true heroism" visit him if he proclaims it 
to every one in his club? A chattering nurse 
betrays his danger to a sick man. The sick man 
takes fright and dies. Was the discovery of the 
truth of his danger very glorious for the patient ? 
or was its publication very sacred in the nurse ? 
Clearly the truths that it is sacred to find out and 
to publish are not all truths, but truths of a cer- 
tain kind only. They are not particular truths 
like these, but the universal and eternal truths 
that underlie them. They are in fact what we call 
the truths of Nature, and the apprehension of 



Life as its own Reward. 



165 



them, or truth as attained by us, means the put- 
ting ourselves en rapport with the life of that 
infinite existence which surrounds and sustains 
all of us. Now since it is this kind of truth only 
that is supposed to be so sacred, it is clear that its 
sacredness does not depend on itself, but on its 
object. Truth is sacred because Nature is sacred ; 
Nature is not sacred because truth is ; and our 
supreme duty to truth means neither more nor 
less than a supreme faith in Nature. It means 
that there is a something in the Infinite outside 
ourselves that corresponds to a certain something 
within ourselves; that this latter something is 
the strongest and the highest part of us, and that 
it can find no rest but in communion with its 
larger counterpart. Truth sought for in this way 
is evidently a distinct thing from the truth of 
utilitarianism. It is no false reflection of human 
happiness in the clouds. For it is to be sought 
for none the less, as our positivists decidedly 
tell us, even though all other happiness should 
be ruined by it. Now what on positive princi- 
ples is the groundword of this teaching? All 
ethical epithets such as sacred, heroic, and so forth 
— all the words, in fact, that are by implication 
applied to Nature — have absolutely no meaning 
save as applied to conscious beings; and as a 
subject for positive observation, there exists no 
consciousness in the universe outside this earth. 
By what conceivable means, then, can the posi- 



Is Life Worth Living? 



tivists transfer to Nature in general qualities 
which, so far as they know, are peculiar to human 
nature only ? They can only do this in one of two 
ways— both of which they would equally repudiate 
— either by an act of fancy, or by an act of faith. 
Tested rigidly by their own fundamental common 
principles, it is as unmeaning to call the universe 
sacred as to say that the moon talks French. 

Let us however pass this by ; let us refuse to 
subject their teaching to the extreme rigor of 
even their own law ; and let us grant that by some 
mixed use of fancy or of mysticism, they can turn 
to Nature as to some vast moral hieroglyph. 
What sort of morality do they find in it ? Nature, 
as positive observation reveals her to us, is a thing 
that can have no claim either on our reverence or 
our approbation. Once apply any moral test to 
her conduct, and as J. S. Mill has so forcibly 
pointed out, she becomes a monster. There is 
no crime that men abhor or perpetrate that Nature 
does not commit daily on an exaggerated scale. 
She knows no sense either of justice or mercy. 
Continually indeed she seems to be tender, and 
loving, and bountiful ; but all that, at such time 
those that know her can exclaim to her, is 

" Miseri quibua 
Intentata nites." 

At one moment she will be blessing a country 
with plentjr, peace, and sunshine ; and she will 
the next moment ruin the whole of it by an earth- 



Life as its oivn Reward. 



167 



quake. Now she is the image of thrift, now of 
prodigality ; now of the utmost purity, now of the 
most revolting filth ; and if, as I say, she is to be 
judged by any moral standard at all, her capacities 
for what is admirable not only make her crimes 
the darker, but they also make her virtues partake 
of the nature of sin. How, then, can an intimacy 
with this eternal criminal be an ennobling or a 
sacred thing. The theist, of course, believes that 
truth is sacred. But his belief rests on a founda- 
tion that has been altogether renounced by the 
positivists. He values truth because, in whatever 
direction it takes him, it takes him either to God 
or towards Him — God, to whom he is in some 
sort akin, and after whose likeness he is in some 
sort made. He sees Nature to be cruel, wicked, 
and bewildering when viewed by itself. But be- 
hind Nature he sees a vaster power — his father 
— in whom mysteriously all contradictions are 
reconciled. Nature for him is God's, but it is not 
God ; and " though God slay me," he says, " yet 
will I trust in Him." This trust can be attained 
to only by an act of faith like this. No observa- 
tion or experiment, or any positive method of any 
kind, will be enough to give it us ; rather, with- 
out faith, observation and experiment will do 
nothing but make it seem impossible. Thus a 
belief in the sacredness of Nature, or, in other 
words, in the essential value of truth, is as strictly 
an act of religion, as strictly a defiance of the 



168 



Is Life Worth Living? 



whole positive formula, as any article in any ec- 
clesiastical creed : It is simply a concrete foim of 
the beginning of the Christian symbol, " I believe 
in God the Father Almighty." It rests on the 
same foundation, neither more nor less. Nor is 
it too much to say that without a religion, with- 
out a belief in God, no fetish-worship was ever 
more ridiculous than this cultus of natural truth. 

This subject is so important that it will be well 
to dwell on it a little longer. I will take another 
passage from Dr. Tyndall, which presents it to us 
in a slightly different light, and which speaks ex- 
plicitly not of truth itself, but of that sacred 
Object beyond, of which truth is only the sacra- 
mental channel to us. " ' Two things/ said Im- 
manuel Kant" (it is thus Dr. Tyndall writes), 
" ' fill me with awe — the starry heavens, and the 
sense of moral responsibility in man.'" And in 
the hours of health and strength and sanity,, when 
the stroke of action has ceased, and when the 
pause of reflection has set in, the scientific inves- 
tigator finds himself overshadowed by the same 
awe. Breaking contact with the hampering de- 
tails of earth, it associates him with a power 
which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but 
which he can neither analyse nor comprehend." 
This, Dr. Tyndall tells us, is the only rational 
statement of the fact of that " divine communion/' 
whose nature is " simply distorted and desecrated' 
by the unwarranted assumptions of theism. 



Life as its own Reward. 



169 



Now let us try to consider accurately what Dr. 
Tyndall's statement means. Knowledge of Na- 
ture, he says, associates him with Nature. It 
withdraws him from "the hampering details of 
earth/ 5 and enables the individual human being 
to have communion with a something that is be- 
yond humanity. But what is communion ? It is 
a word with no meaning at all save as referring 
to conscious beings. There could be no com- 
munion between two corpses ; nor again between 
a corpse and a living man. Dr. Tyndall, for in- 
stance, could have no communion with a dead 
canary. Communion implies the existence on 
both sides of a common something. Now what 
is there in common between Dr. Tyndall and 
the starry heavens, or that "power" of which 
the starry heavens are the embodiment? Dr. 
Tyndall expressly says that he not only does 
not know what there is in common, but that he 
"dare" not even say that, as conscious beings, 
they two have anything in common at all.* The 
only things he can know about the power in ques- 
tion are that it is vast, and that it is uniform; 
but a contemplation of these qualities by them- 

* "When I attempt to give the power which I see manifested in the uni- 
verse an objective form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, de- 
clining all intellectual manipulation, I dare not, save poetically, use the 
pronoun "He" regarding it. I dare not call it a "Mind." I refuse even 
to call it a '* Cause." Its mystery overshadows me; but it remains a mys- 
tery, while the objective frames which my neighbors try to make it fit, 
simply distort and desecrate it." — Dr. Tyndall, "Materialism and its Op- 
ponents." 



170 



Is Life Worth Living? 



selves must tend rather to produce in him a 
sense of separation from it than of union with it. 
United with it, in one sense, he of course is ; he is 
a fraction of the sum of things, and everything, in 
a certain way, is dependent upon everything else. 
But in this union there is nothing special. Its 
existence is an obvious fact, common to all men, 
whether they dwell upon it or no : and though by 
a knowledge of Nature we may grow to realise it 
more keenly, it is impossible to make the union 
in the least degree closer, or to turn it into any- 
thing that can be in any way called a communion. 
Indeed, for the positivists to talk about com- 
munion or association with Nature is about as 
rational as to talk about communion or associa- 
tion with a steam-engine. The starry skies at 
night are doubtless an imposing spectacle; but 
man, on positive principles, can be no more raised 
by watching them than a commercial traveller can 
by watching a duke — probably far less ; for if the 
duke were well behaved, the commercial traveller 
might perhaps learn some manners from him; 
but there is nothing in the panorama of the uni- 
verse that can in any way be any model for the 
positivist. There are but two respects in which 
he can compare himself to the rest of nature — 
firstly, as a revealed force ; and, secondly, as a 
force that works by law. But the forces that are 
revealed by the stars, for instance, are vast, and 
the force revealed in himself is small ; and he, as 



Life as its own Reivard. 



171 



he considers, is a self-determining agent, and the 
stars are net. There are but two points of com- 
parison between the two ; and in these two points 
they are contrasts, and not likenesses. It is 
true, indeed, as I said just now, that a sense of 
awe and of hushed solemnity is, as a fact, born in 
us at the spectacle of the starry heavens— world 
upon luminous world shining and quivering sil- 
ently ; it is true, too, that a spontaneous feeling 
connects such a sense somehow with our deepest 
moral being. But this, on positive principles, 
must be feeling only. It means absolutely noth- 
ing : it can have no objective fact that corresponds 
to it. -It is an illusion, a pathetic fallacy. And 
to say that the heavens with their stars declare 
to us anything high or holy, is no more rational 
than to say that Brighton does, which itself, seen 
at night from the sea, is a long braid of stars des- 
cended upon the wide horizon. All that the study 
of nature, all that the love of truth, can clo for the 
positivist is not to guide him to any communion 
with a vaster power, but to show him that no such 
communion is possible. His devotion to truth, if 
it mean anything — and the language he often uses 
about it betrays this — let us know the worst, not 
let us find out the best : a wish which is neither 
more nor less noble than the wish to sit down at 
once in a slop upon the floor rather than sustain 
oneself any longer above it on a chair that is dis- 
covered to be rickety. 



172 



Is Life Worth Living? 



Here then again, in this last resource of positi- 
vism we have religion embodied as a yet more im- 
portant element than in any of the others ; and 
when this element is driven out of it, it collapses 
yet more hopelessly than they do. By the whole 
positive system we are bound to human life. 
There is no mystical machinery by which we can 
rise above it. It is by its own isolated worth 
that this life must stand or fall. 

And what, let us again ask, will this worth be ? 
The question is of course, as I have said, too 
vague to admit of more than a general answer, 
but a general answer, as I have said also, may be 
given confidently enough. Man when fully im- 
bued with the positive view of himself, will inev- 
itably be an animal of far fewer capacities than 
he at present is. He will not be able to suffer so 
much ; but also he will not be able to enjoy so 
much. Surround him, in imagination, with the 
most favourable circumstances; let social progress 
have been carried to the utmost perfection; and 
let him have access to every happiness of which 
we can conceive him capable. It is impossible 
even thus to conceive of life as a valuable posses- 
sion to him. It would at any rate be far less 
valuable than it is to many men now, under outer 
circumstances that are far less favourable. The 
goal to which a purely human progress is capable 
of conducting us, is thus no vague c ^ldition of 
glory and felicity, in which men shall develop new 



The Superstition of Positivism. 173 

and ampler powers. Tt is a condition in which 
' the keenest life attainable has continually been 
far surpassed already, without anything having 
been arrived at that in itself seemed of surpassing 
value. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. 

Glendower. — 1 can call spirits from the vasty deep. 
Hotspur. — Why so can I, or so can any man, 

But will they come when you do call for them ? 

Henry IV. Part 1. 

GENEEAL and indefinite as the foregoing con- 
siderations have been, they are quite definite 
enough to be of the utmost practical import. 
They are definite enough to show the utter hol- 
lowness of that vague faith in progress, and the 
glorious prospects that lie before humanity, on 
which the positive school at present so much rely, 
and about which so much is said. To a certain 
extent, indeed, a faith in progress is perfectly 
rational and well grounded. There are many 
imperfections in life, which the course of events 
tends manifestly to lessen if not to do away with, 
and so far as these are concerned, improvements 



174 



Is Life Worth Living? 



may go on indefinitely. But the things that this 
progress touches are, as has been said bofore, not 
happiness, but the negative conditio] is of it. A 
belief in this kind of progress is not peculiar to 
positivism. It is common to all educated men, 
no matter what their creed may be. What is 
peculiar to positivism is the strange corollary to 
this belief, that man's subjective powers of happi- 
ness will go on expanding likewise. It is the 
belief not only that the existing pleasures will 
become more diffused, but that they will, as 
George Eliot says, become " more intense in dif- 
fusion." It is this belief on which the positivists 
rely to create that enthusiasm, that impassioned 
benevolence, which is to be the motive power of 
their whole ethical machinery. They have taken 
away the Christian heaven, and have thus turned 
adrift a number of hopes and aspirations that 
were once powerful. These hopes and aspirations 
they acknowledge to be of the first necessity; 
they are facts, they say, of human nature, and no 
higher progress would be possible without them. 
What the enlightened thought is to do is not to 
nextinguish, but to transfer them. They are to be 
given a new object more satisfactory than the old 
one ; not our own private glory in another world, 
but the common glory of our whole race in this. 

Now let us consider for a moment some of the 
positive criticisms on the Christian heaven, and 
then apply them to the proposed substitute. The 



The Superstition of Positivism. 175 



belief in heaven, say the positivists, is to be set 
aside for two great reasons. In the first place 
there is no objective proof of its existence, and in 
the second place there is subjective proof of its 
impossibility. Not only is it not declucible, but it 
is not even thinkable. Give the imagination carte 
blanche to construct it, and the imagination will 
either do nothing, or will do something ridicu- 
lous. " My position [with regard to this matter]/' 
says a popular living writer/' " is this — The idea 
of a glorified energy in an ampler life, is an idea 
utterly incompatible with exact thought, one 
which evaporates in contradictions, jn phrases, 
which when pressed have no meaning." 

Now if this criticism has the least force, as 
used against the Christian heaven, it has certainly 
far more as used against the future glories of 
humanity. The positivists ask the Christians 
how they expect to enjoy themselves in heaven. 
The Christians may, with far more force, ask the 
positivists how they expect to enjoy themselves 
on earth. For the Christians' heaven being ex 
hypothesi an unknown world, they do not stultify 
their expectations from being unable to describe 
them. On the contrary it is a part of their faith 
that they are indescribable. But the positivists' 
heaven is altogether in this world ; and no mysti- 
cal faith has any place in their system. In this 
case, therefore, whatever we may think of the 



* Mr. Frederic Harrison. 



17ft 



Is Lxfe Worth Living? 



other, it is plain that the tests in question are 
altogether complete and final. To the Christians, 
indeed, it is quite open to make their supposed 
shame their glory, and to say that their heaven 
would be nothing if describable. The positivists 
have bound themselves to admit that theirs is 
nothing unless describable. 

What then, let us ask the enthusiasts of human- 
ity, will humanity be like in its ideally perfect 
state ? Let them show us some sample of the 
general future perfection ; let them describe one 
of the nobler, ampler, glorified human beings of 
the future. "What will he be like? What will 
he long for ? What will he take pleasure in ? 
How will he spend his days ? How will he make 
love ? What will he laugh at ? And let him be 
described in phrases which when pressed do not 
evaporate in contradictions, but which have some 
distinct meaning, and are not incompatible with 
exact thought. Do our exact thinkers in the 
least know what they are prophesying ? If not, 
what is the meaning of their prophecy ? The 
prophecies of the positive school are rigid scien- 
tific inferences ; they are that or nothing. And 
one cannot infer an event of whose nature one is 
wholly ignorant. 

Let these obvious questions be put to our posi- 
tive moralists — these questions they have them- 
selves suggested, and the grotesque unreality of 
this vague optimism will be at once apparent. 



The Superstition of Positivism. 177 



Never was vagary of mediaeval faith so groundless 
as this. The Earthly Paradise that the mediaeval 
world believed in was not more mythical than 
the Earthly Paradise believed in by our exact 
thinkers now; and George Eliot might just as 
well start in a Cunard steamer to find the one. 
as send her faith into the future to find the other. 

Could it be shown that these splendid anticipa- 
tions were w^ell founded, they might perhaps 
kindle some new and active enthusiasm ; though 
it is very doubtful, even then, if the desire would 
be ardent enough to bring about its ow r n accom- 
plishment. This, however, it is quite useless to 
consider, the anticipations in question being simply 
an empty dream. A certain kind of improvement, 
as I have said, we are no doubt right in looking 
for, not only with confidence, but with compla- 
cency. But positivism, so far from brightening 
this prospect, makes it indefinitely duller than it 
would be otherwise. The practical results there- 
fore to be looked for from a faith in progress may 
be seen at their utmost already in the world 
around us ; and the positivists may make the 
sobering reflection that their system can only 
change these from what they already see them, 
not by strengthening, but by weakening them. 
Take the world then as it is at present, and the 
sense, on the individual's part, that he personally 
is promoting its progress, can belong to, and can 

stimulate, exceptional men only, who are doing 
11 



173 



Is Life Worth Living t 



some public work ; and it will be found even in 
these cases that the pleasure which this sense 
gives them is largely fortified (as is said of wine) 
by the entirely alien sense of feme and power. 
On the generality of men it neither has, nor can 
have, any effect whatever, or even if it gives a 
glow to their inclinations in some cases, it will at 
any rate never curb them in any. The fact in- 
deed that things in general do tend to get better 
in certain ways, must produce in most men not 
effort but acquiescence. It may, when the imagi- 
nation brings it home to them, shed a pleasing 
light occasionally over the surface of their private 
lives : but it would be as irrational to count on 
this as a stimulus to farther action, as to expect 
that the summer sunshine would work a steam- 
engine. 

If we consider, then, that even the present 
condition of things is far more calculated to pro- 
duce the enthusiasm of humanity than the condi- 
tion that the positivists are preparing for them- 
selves, we shall see how utterly chimerical is their 
entire practical system. It is like a drawing of a 
cathedral, which looks magnificent at the first 
glance, but which a second glance shows to be 
composed of structural impossibilities — blocks of 
masonary resting on no foundations, columns hang- 
ing from the roofs, instead of supporting them, 
and doors and windows with inverted arches. The 
positive system could only work practically were 



The Superstition of Positivism. 179 



human nature to suffer a complete change— a 
change which it has no spontaneous tendency to 
make, which no known- power could ever tend to 
force on it, and which, in short, there is no ground 
of any kind for expecting. 

There are two characteristics in men, for in- 
stance, which, though they undoubtedly do exist, 
the positive system requires to be indefinitely mag- 
nified — the imagination, and unselfishness. The 
work of the imagination is to present to the indi- 
vidual consciousness the remote ends to which all 
progress is to be directed ; and the desire to work 
for these is, on the positive supposition, to conquer 
all mere personal impulses. Now men have al- 
ready had an end set before them, in the shape of 
the joys of heaven, which was far brighter and 
far more real to them than these others can ever 
be ; and yet the imagination has so failed to keep 
this before them, that its small effect upon their 
lives is a commonplace with the positivists them- 
selves. How then can these latter hope that their 
own pale and distant ideal will have a more vivid 
effect on the world than that near and slowing 
one, in whose place they put it ? Will it incite 
men to virtues to which heaven could not incite 
them ? or lure them away from vices from which 
hell-fire would not scare them ? Before it can do 
so, it is plain that human nature must have been 
completely changed, and its elements re-mixed, 
in completely new proportions. In a state of 



180 Is Life Worth Living? 



things where such a result was possible, a man 
would do a better day's work for a penny to be 
given to his unborn grands~7i, than he would now 
do for a pound to be paid to himself at sunset. 

For argument's sake, however, let us suppose 
such a change possible. Let us suppose the 
imagination to be so developed that the remote 
end of progress — that happier state of men in 
some far off century — ds ever vividly present to 
us as a possibility we may help to realise. An- 
other question still remains for us. To preserve 
this happiness for others, we are told, we must to 
a large extent sacrifice our own. Is it in human 
nature to make the sacrifice ? The positive moral- 
ists assure us that it is, and for this reason. 
Man, they say, is an animal who enjoys vicari- 
ously with almost as much zest as in his own 
person ; and therefore to procure a greater plea- 
sure for others makes him far happier than to 
procure a less one for himself. In this statement, 
as I have observed in an earlier chapter, there is 
no doubt a certain general truth ; but how far it 
will hold good in particular instances depends 
altogether on particular circumstances. It de- 
pends on the temperament of the person who is 
to make the sacrifice, on the nature of his feelings 
towards the person for whom he is to make it, 
and on the proportion between the pleasure he is 
to forego himself, and the pleasure he is to 
secure for another. Now if we consider human 



The Superstition of Positivism. 181 



nature as it is, and the utmost development of it 
that on positive grounds is possible, the condi- 
tions that can produce the requisite self-sacrifice 
will be found to be altogether wanting. The 
future we are to labor for, even when viewed in 
its brightest light, will only excel the .present in 
having fewer miseries. So far as its happiness 
goes it will be distinctly less intense. It will, as 
we have seen already, be but a vapid consum- 
mation at its best ; and the more vividly it is 
brought before us in imagination, the less likely 
shall we be to " struggle, groan, and agonize," for 
the sake of hastening it in reality. It will do 
nothing, at any rate, to increase the tendency to 
self-sacrifice that is now at work in the world ; 
and this, though startling us now and then by some 
spasmodic manifestation, is not strong enough to 
have much general effect on the present; still less 
will it have more effect on the future. Vicarious 
happiness as a rule is only possible when the 
object gained for another is enormously greater 
than the object lost by self; and it is not always 
possible even then : whilst when the gains on 
either side are nearly equal, it ceases altogether. 
And necessarily so. If it did not, everything 
would be at a dead-lock. Life would be a per- 
petual holding back, instead of a pushing forward. 
Everyone would be waiting at the door, and say- 
ing to everyone else " After you." But all these 
practical considerations are entirely forgotten by 



182 



Is Life Worth Living? 



the positivists. They live in a world of their own 
imagining, in which all the rules of this world are 
turned upside down. There, the defeated candi- 
date in an election would be radiant at his rival's 
victory. When a will was read, the anxiety of 
each relative would be that he or she should be 
excluded in favor of the others ; or more proba- 
bly still that they should be all excluded in favor 
of a hospital. Two rivals, in love with the same 
woman, would be each anxious that his own suit 
might be thwarted. And a man would gladly 
involve himself in any ludicrous misfortune, be- 
cause he knew that the sight of his catastrophe 
would rejoice his whole circle of friends. The 
course of human progress, in fact, would be one 
gigantic donkey-race, in which those were the 
winners who were farthest off from the prize. 

"We have but to state the matter in terms of 
common life, to see how impossible is the only 
condition of things that would make the positive 
system practicable. The first wonder that sug- 
gests itself, is how so grotesque a conception 
could ever have originated. But its genesis is 
not far to seek. The positivists do not postu- 
late any new elements in human nature, but the 
reduction of some, elimination of others, and the 
magnifying of others. And they actually find 
cases where this process has been affected. But 
they quite forget the circumstances that have 
made such an event possible. They forget that 



The Superstition of Positivism. 3 83 



in their very nature tliey have been altogether 
exceptional and transitory ; and that it is impos- 
sible to construst a Utopia in which they shall 
exist at all. We can, for instance, no doubt point 
to Leonidas and the three hundred as specimens 
of what human heroism can rise to ; and we can 
point to the Stoics as specimens of human self- 
control. But to make a new Thermopylae we 
want a new Barbarian ; and before we can recoil 
from temptation as the Stoics did, we must make 
pleasure as perilous and as terrible as it was 
under the Roman emperors. Such developments 
of humanity are at their very essence abnormal ; 
and to suppose that they could ever become the 
common type of character, would be as absurd as 
to suppose that all mankind could be kings. I 
will take another instance that is more to the 
point yet. A favorite positivist parable is that of 
the miser. The miser in the first place desires 
gold because it can buy pleasure. Next he comes 
to desire it more than the pleasure it can buy. 
In the same way, it is said, men can be taught to 
desire virtue by investing it with the attractions 
of the end, to which, strictly speaking, it is no 
more than the means. But this parable really 
disproves the very possibility it is designed to 
illustrate. It is designed to illustrate the possi- 
bility of our choosing actions that will give plea- 
sure to others, in contradistinction to actions that 
will give pleasure to ourselves. But the miser 



184 



Is Life Wortli Living? 



desires gold for an exactly opposite reason. He 
desires it as potential selfishness, not as potential 
philanthropy. Secondly, we are to choose the 
actions in question because they will make us 
happy. But the very name we give the miser 
shows that the analogous choice in his case makes 
him miserable. Thirdly, the material miser is an 
exceptional character ; there is no known means 
by which it can be made more common; and with 
the moral miser the case will be just the same. 
Lastly, if such a character be barely producible 
even in the present state of the world, much less 
will it be producible when human capacities shall 
have been curtailed by positivism, when the plea- 
sures that the gold of virtue represents are less 
intense than at present, and the value of the 
coveted coin is indefinitely depreciated. 

Much more might be added to the same pur- 
pose, but enough has been said already to make 
these two points clear : — firstly, that the positive 
system, if it is to do any practical work in the 
world, requires that the whole human character 
shall be profoundly altered; and secondly, that 
the required alteration is one that may indeed be 
dreamt about, but which can never possibly be 
made. Even were it made, the results would not 
be splendid ; but no matter how splendid they 
might be, this is of no possible moment to us. 
There are few things on which it is idler to specu- 
late than the issues of impossible contingencies. 



The Superstition of Positivism. 



185 



And the positivists would be talking just as much 
to the purpose as they do now, were they to tell 
us how fast we should travel supposing we had 
wings, or what deep water we could wade through 
if we were twenty-four feet high. These last, in- 
deed, are just the suppositions that they do make. 
Between our human nature and the nature they 
desiderate there is a deep and fordless river, over 
which they can throw no bridge, and all their talk 
supposes that we shall be able to fly or wade 
across it, or else that it will dry up of itsel£ 

"Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille 
Labitur et labetur, in omne volubilis oevum. M 

So utterly grotesque and chimerical is this whole 
positive theory of progress, that, as an outcome of 
the present age, it seems little short of a miracle. 
Professing to embody what that age considers its 
special characteristics, what it really embodies is 
the most emphatic negation of these. It professes 
to rest on experience, and yet no Christian legend 
ever contradicted experience more. It professes 
• to be sustained by proof, and yet the professions 
of no conjuring quack ever appealed more exclu- 
sively to credulity. 

Its appearance, however, will cease to be won- 
derful, and its real significance will become more 
apparent, if we consider the class of thinkers who 
have elaborated and popularised it. There have 
been men and women, for the most part, who have 



186 



Is Life Worth Liting? 



had the following characteristics in common, 
Their early training has been religious ; * their 
temperaments have been naturally grave and ear- 
nest ; they have had few strong passions ; they 
have been brought up knowing little of what is 
commonly called the world; their intellects have 
been vigorous and active ; and finally they have 
rejected in maturity the religion by which all 
their thoughts have been colored. The result has 
been this. The death of their religion has left 
a quantity of moral emotions without an object; 
and this disorder of the moral emotions has left 
their mental energies without a leader. A new 
object instantly becomes a necessity. They are 
ethical Don Quixotes in want of a Dulcinea ; the 
best they can find is happiness and the progress 
of Humanity ; and to this their imagination soon 
gives the requisite glow. Their strong intellects, 
their activity, and their literary culture each sup- 
plements the power that it undoubtedly does give, 
with a sense of knowing the world that is alto- 
gether fictitious. They imagine that their own 
narrow lives, their own feeble temptations, and 
their own exceptional ambitions represent the 

* The case of J. S. Mill may seem at first sight to be an exception to this. 
But it is really not so. Though he was brought up without any religious 
teaching, yet the severe and earnest influences of his childhood would have 
been impossible except in a religious country. He was in fact brought up 
in an atmosphere (if I may borrow with a slight change a phrase of Professor 
Huxley's) of Puritanism minus Christianity. It may be remembered farther 
that Mill says of himself, " I am one of the very few examples of one who 
has not thrown off religious belief, but never had it." 



Tke Superstition of Positivism. J. 87 



universal elements of human life and character ; 
and they thus expect that an object which has 
really been but the creature of an impulse in 
themselves, will be the creator of a like impulse 
in others ; and that in the case of others, it will 
reA T olutionise the whole natural character, whereas 
it has only been a symbol of it in their own. 

Most of our positive moralists, at least in this- 
country, have been and are people of such excel- 
lent character, and such earnest and high purpose, 
that there is something painful in having to taunt 
them with an ignorance which is not their own 
fault, and which must make their whole position 
ridiculous. The charge, however, is one that it is 
quite necessary to make, as we shall never pro- 
perly estimate their system if we pass it over. It 
will be said, probably, that the simplicity as to 
worldly matters I attribute to them, so far from 
telling against them, is really essential to their 
character as moral teachers. And to moral 
teachers of a certain kind it may be essential. 
But it is not so to them. The religious moralist 
might well instruct the world, though he knew 
little of its ways and passions ; for the aim of his 
teaching was to withdraw men from the world. 
But the aim of the positive moralist is precisely 
opposite ; it is to keep men in the world. It is 
not to teach men to despise this life, but to adore 
it. The positions of the two moralists are in fact 
the exact converses of each other. For the divine, 



188 



Is Life Worth Living? 



earth is an illusion, heaven a reality ; for the posi- 
tivist, earth is a reality, and heaven an illusion. 
The former in his retirement studied intensely 
the world that he thought real, and he could do 
this the better for being not distracted by the 
other. The positivists imitate the divine in neg- 
lecting what they think is an illusion; but they 
do not attempt to imitate him in studying what 
they think is the reality. The consequence is, as 
I have just been pointing out, that the world they 
live in and to which alone their system could be 
applicable, is a world of their own creation, and its 
bloodless populations are all of them idola specus. 

If we will but think all this calmly over, and 
try really to sympathise with the position of these 
poor enthusiasts, we shall soon see their system 
in its true light, and shall learn at once to realise 
and to excuse its fatuity. We shall see that it 
either has no meaning whatever, or that its 
meaning is one that its authors have already 
repudiated, and only do not recognise now, be- 
cause they have so inadequately re-expressed it. 
We shall see that their system has no motive 
power at all in it, or that its motive power is 
simpty the theistic faith they rejected, now tied 
up in a sack and left to flounder instead of walk- 
ing upright. We shall see that their system is 
either nothing, or that it is a mutilated reproduc- 
tion of the very thing it professes to be super- 
seding. Once set it upon its own professed foun- 



The Superstition of Positivism. ■ 189 



dations, and the entire quasi-religious structure, 
with its visionary hopes,, its impossible enthu- 
siasms — all its elaborate apparatus for enlarging 
the single life, and the generation that surrounds 
it, falls to earth instantly like a castle of cards. 
We are left simply each of us with our own lives, 
and with the life about us, amplified indeed to a 
certain extent by sympathy, but to a certain ex- 
tent only — an extent whose limits we are quite 
familiar with from experience, and which posi- 
tivism, if it tends to move them at all, can only 
narrow, and can by no possibility extend. We 
are left with this life, changed only in one way. 
It will have nothing added to it, but it will have 
much taken from it. Everything will have gone 
that is at present keenest in it — joys and miseries 
as well. In this way positivism is indeed an 
engine of change, and may inaugurate if not com- 
plete a most momentous kind of progress. That 
progress is the gradual cle-religionising of life, the 
slow sublimating out of it of its concrete theism— 
the slow destruction of its whole moral civilisation. 
And as this progress continues there will not only 
fade out of the human consciousness the thimrs I 
have before dwelt on — all capacity for the keener 
pains and pleasures, but there will fade out of it 
also that strange sense which is the union of all 
these — the white light woven of all these rays ; 
that is, the vague but deep sense of some special 
dignity in ourselves — a sense which we feel to be 



190 



2s Life Worth Living? 



our birthright, inalienable except by our own act 
and deed ; a sense which, at present, in success 
sobers us^ and in failure sustains us, and which is 
visible more or less distinctly in our manners, in 
our bearing, and even in the very expression of 
the human countenance : it is, in other words, the 
sense that life is worth living, not acciclently but 
essentially. And as this sense goes its place will 
be taken by one precisely opposite— the sense that 
life, in so far as it is worth living at all, is worth 
living not essentially, but accidentally; that it 
depends entirely upon what of its pleasures we 
can each one of us realise ; that it will vary as a 
positive quantity, like wealth, and that it may 
become also a various quantity, like poverty ; and 
that behind and beyond these vicissitudes it can 
have no abiding value. 

To realise fully a state of things like this is for 
us not possible. But we can, however, understand 
something of its nature. I conceive those to be 
altogether wrong wdio say that such a state would 
be one of any wild license, or anything that we 
should call very revolting depravity. Offences, 
certainly, that we consider the most abominable 
would doubtless be committed continually and as 
matters of course. Such a feeling as shame about 
them would be altogether unknown. But the 
normal forms of passion would remain, I conceive, 
the most important ; and it is probable, that 
though no form of vice would have the least 



The Superstition of Positivism. 



191 



anathema attached to it, the rage for the sexual 
pleasures would be far less fierce than it is in 
many cases now. The sort of condition to which 
the world would be tending would be a condition 
rather of dulness than what Ave, in our parlance, 
should now call degradation. Indeed the state 
of things to which the positive view of life seems 
to promise us, and which to some extent it is 
actually now bringing on us, is exactly what was 
predicted long ago, with an accuracy that seems 
little less than inspired, at the end of Pope's 
Dunciad. 

u In vain, in vain : the all-composing hour 
Resistless falls ! the muse obeys the power. 
She comes ! she comes ! the sable throng behold 
Of night primaeval and of chaos old. 
Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay, 
And all its varying rainbows die away. 
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, 
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires 
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, 
The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain ; 
As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd 
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest ; 
Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, 
Art after art goes out, and ail is night. 
See skulking truth to her old cavern fled, 
Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head. 
Philosophy, that lean'd on heaven before, 
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. 
Physic of metaphysic begs defence, 
And metaphysic calls for aid on sense ! 
See mystery to mathematics fly. 
In vain : they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die. 
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires ; 
And, unawares, morality expires. 



192 Is Life Worth Living? 



Kor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, 
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. 
Lo ! thy dread empire, Cliaos ! is restor'd, 
Light dies before thy uncreating word, 
Thy hand, great Anarch ! lets the curtain fall; 
And universal darkness buries all." 

Dr. Johnson said that theso verses were the 
noblest in English poetry. Could he have read 
them in our day, and have realised with what a 
pitiful accuracy their prophecy might soon begin 
to fulfil itself, he would probably have been too 
busy with dissatisfaction at the matter of it to 
have any time to spare for an artistic approbation 
of the manner. 



CHAPTER VUL 
jiHE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. 

"Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck • • • 
Nor can I for time to brief minutes tell. 1 * 

Shakespeare, Sonnet XIV. 

rFIHE prospects I have been just describing as 
1- the goal of positive progress will seem, no 
doubt, to many to be quite impossible in its cheer* 
lessness. If the future glory of our race was a 
dream, not worth dwelling on, much more so, 
they will say, in such a future abasement of it as 



The Practical Prospect. 



193 



this. They will say that optimism may at times 
have perhaps been over-sanguine, but that this 
was simply the exuberance of health ; whereas 
pessimism is, in its very nature, the gloom and 
languor of a disease. 

Now with much of this view of the matter I en- 
tirely agree. I admit that the prospect I have 
described may be an impossible one ; personally, 
I believe it is so. I admit also that pessimism is 
the consciousness of disease, confessing itself. 
But the significance of these admissions is the 
very opposite of what it is commonly supposed 
to be. They do not make the pessimism I have 
been arguing one whit less worthy of attention ; on 
the contrary, they make it more worthy. This is 
the point on which I may most readily be mis- 
understood. I will therefore try to make my 
meaning as clear as possible. 

Pessimism, then, represents, to the popular 
mind, a philosophy or view of life the very name 
of which is enough to condemn it. The popular 
mind, however, overlooks one important point. 
Pessimism is a vague word. It does not repre- 
sent one philosophy, but several ; and before we, 
in any case, reject its claims on our attention, we 
should take care to see what its exact meaning is. 

The views of life it includes may be classified 
in two ways. In the first place, they are either 
what we may call critical pessimisms or prospec- 
tive pessimisms : of which the thesis of the first 

12 



194 



Is Life Worth Living? 



is that human life is essentially evil ; and of the 
second, that whatever human life may be now, its 
tendency is to get worse instead of better. The 
one is the denial of human happiness ; the other 
the denial of human hope. But there is a second 
classification to make, traversing this one, and far 
more important. Pessimism may be either abso- 
lute or hypothetical. The first of these maintains 
its theses as statements of actual facts ; the second, 
which is, of its nature, prospective mainly, only 
maintains them as statements of what will be facts, 
in the event of certain possible though it may be 
remote contingencies. 

Now, absolute pessimism, whether it be critical 
or prospective, can be nothing, in the present 
state of the world, but an exhibition of ill temper 
or folly. It is hard to imagine a greater waste 
of ingenuity than the attempts that have been 
made sometimes to deduce from the nature of pain 
and pleasure, that the balance in life must be al- 
ways in favor of the former, and that life itself 
is necessarily and universally an evil. Let the 
arguments be never so elaborate, they are blown 
away like cobwebs by a breath of open-air ex- 
perience. Equally useless are the attempts to 
predict the gloom of the future. Such predic- 
tions either mean nothing, or else they are mere 
loose conjectures, suggested by low spirits or 
disappointment. They are of no philosophic or 
scientific value ; and though in some cases they 



The Practical Prospect. 



195 



may give literary expression to moods already 
existing, they will never produce conviction in 
minds that would else be unconvinced. The gift 
of prophecy as to general human history is not a 
gift that any philosophy can bestow. It could 
only be acquired through a superhuman inspira- 
tion which is denied to man or through a saper- 
human sagacity which is never attained by him. 

The hypothetical pessimism that is contained 
in my arguments is a very different thing from 
this, and far humbler. It makes no foolish at- 
tempts to say anything general about the present, 
or anything absolute about the future. As to the 
future, it only takes the absolute things that 
have been said by others ; and not professing any 
certainty about their truth, merely explains their 
meaning. It deals with a certain change in human 
beliefs, now confidently predicted; but it does 
not say that this prediction will be fulfilled. It 
says only that if it be, a change, not at present 
counted on, will be effected in human life. It 
says that human life will degenerate if the creed of 
positivism be ever generally accepted ; but it not 
only does not say that it ever will be accepted by 
everybody : rather, it emphatically points out that 
as yet it has been accepted fully by nobody. Th 
positive school say that their view of life is the 
only sound one. They boast that it is foundec 1 
on the rock of fact, not on the sand-bank of senti- 
ment ; that it is the final philosophy, that will 



196 



Is Life Worth Living? 



last as long as man lasts, and that very soon it 
will have seen the extinction of all the others. It 
is the positivists who are the prophets, not I. 
My aim his been not to confirm the prophecy, 
but to explain its meaning; and my arguments 
will be all the more opportune at the present 
moment, the more reason we have to think the 
prophecy fa^e. 

It may be asked why, if we think it false, we 
should trouble our heads about it. And the an- 
swer to this is to be found in the present age 
itself. W hatever may be the future fate of posi- 
tive thought, whatever confidence may be felt by 
any of us that it cannot in the long, run gain a 
final hold upon the world, its present power and 
the present results of it cannot be overlooked. 
That degradation of life that I have been describ- 
ing as the result of positivism — of what the age 
we live in calls the only rational view of things — 
may indeed never be completed ; but let us look 
carefully around us, and we shall see that it is al- 
ready begun. The process, it is true, is at present 
not very apparent ; or if it is, its nature is alto- 
gether mistaken. This, however, only makes it 
more momentous ; and the great reason why it is 
desirable to deal so rudely with the optimist sys- 
tem of the positivists is that it lies like a misty 
veil over the real surface of facts, and conceals 
the very change that it professes to make impos- 
sible. It is a kind of moral chloroform, which, 



The Practical Prospect. 



1ST 



instead of curing an illness, only makes us fatally 
unconscious of its most alarming symptoms. 

But though an effort be thus reouired to realise 
our true condition, it is an effort which, before all 
things, we ought to make ; and which, if we try, 
we can all make readily. A little careful memory, 
a little careful observation, will open the eyes of 
most of us to the real truth of things ; it will re- 
veal to us a spectacle that is indeed appalling, and 
the more candidly we survey it, the more shall we 
feel aghast at it. To begin, then, let us once more 
consider two notorious facts : first, that over all 
the world at the present day a denial is spreading 
itself of all religious dogmas, more complete than 
has ever before been known ; and, secondly, that 
in spite of this speculative denial, and in the 
places where it has done its work most thorough- 
ly, a mass of moral earnestness seems to survive 
untouched. I do not attempt to deny the fact; 
I desire, on the contrary, to draw all attention to 
it. But the condition in which it survives is com- 
monly not in the least realised. The class of men 
concerned with it are like soldiers who may be 
fighting more bravely perhaps than ever; but 
who are fighting, though none observe it, with 
the death-wound under their uniforms. Of all 
the signs of the times, these high-minded unbe- 
lievers are thought to be the most reassuring ; but 
^eally they are the very reverse of this. The rea- 
son why their true condition iias passed unnouced 



198 Is Life Worth Living? 



is, that it is a condition that is naturally silent, 
and that has great difficulty in finding a mouth- 
piece. The only two parties who have had any 
interest in commenting on it have been the very 
parties least able to understand, and most certain 
to distort it. They have been either the professed 
champions of theism, or else the visionary opti- 
mists of positivism ; the former of whom have 
had no sympathy with positive principles, and the 
latter no discernment of their results. The class 
of men we are considering are equally at variance 
with both of these ; they agree with each in one 
respect, and in another they agree with neither. 
They agree with the one that religious belief is 
false ; they agree with the other that unbelief is 
miserable. What wonder then that they should 
have kept their condition to themselves ? Nearly 
all public dealing with it has been left to men who 
can praise the only doctrines that they can preach 
as true, or who else can condemn as false the doc- 
trines that they deplore as mischievous. As for 
the others, whose mental and moral convictions 
are at variance, they have neither any heart to 
proclaim the one, nor any intellectual stand-point 
from which to proclaim the other. Their only 
impulse is to struggle and to endure in silence. 
Let us, however, try to intrude upon their pri- 
vacy, even though it be rudely and painfully, and 
see what their real state is ; for it is these men 
who are the true product of the present age, its 



The Practical Prospect. 



most special and distinguishing feature, and the 
first-fruits of what we are told is to be the philo- 
sophy of the enlightened future. 

To begin, then, let us remember what these men 
were when Christians ; and we shall be better 
able to realise what they are now. They were 
men who believed firmly in the supreme and solemn 
importance of life, in the privilege that it was to 
live, despite all temporal sorrow. They had a rule 
of conduct which would guide them, they believed, 
to the true end of their being — to an existence 
satisfying and excellent beyond anything that 
imagination could suggest to them ; they had the 
dread of a corresponding ruin to fortify them- 
selves in their struggle against the wrong; and 
they had a God ever present, to help and hear, 
and take pity on them. And yet even thus, 
selfishness would beset the most unselfish, and 
weariness the most determined. How hard the 
battle was, is known to all ; it has been the most 
prominent commonplace in human thought and 
language. The constancy and the strength of 
temptation, and the insidiousness of the arguments 
it was supported by, has been proverbial. To 
explain away the difference between good and 
evil, to subtly steal its meaning out of long-suffer- 
ing and self-denial, and, above all, to argue that 
in sinning " we shall not surely die/' a work which 
was supposed to belong especially to the devil, 
has been supposed to have been accomplished by 



200 



Is Life Worth Living? 



hiin with a success continually irresistible. What, 
then, is likely to be the case now, with men who 
are still beset with the same temptations, when 
not only they have no hell to frighten, no heaven 
to allure, and no God to help them ; but when all 
the arguments that they once felt belonged to the 
father of lies, are pressed on them from every side 
as the most solemn and universal truths ? Thus 
far the result has been a singular one. With an 
astonishing vigour the moral impetus still survives 
the cessation of the forces that originated and 
sustained it ; and in many cases there is no dimin- 
ution of it traceable, so far as action goes. This, 
however, is only true, for the most part, of men 
advanced in years, in whom habits of virtue have 
grown strong, and whose age, position, and cir- 
cumstances secure them from strong temptation. 
To see the real work of positive thought we must 
go to younger men, whose characters are less 
formed, whose careers are still before them, and 
on whom temptation of all kinds has stronger 
hold. We shall find such men with the sense of 
virtue equally vivid in them, and the desire to 
practise it probably far more passionate ; but the 
effect of positive thought on them we shall see to 
be very different. 

Now, the positive school itself will say that such 
men have all they need. They confessedly have 
conscience left to them — the supernatural moral 
judgment , that is, as applied to themselves — which 



The Practical Prospect. 



201 



has been analysed, but not destroyed ; and the 
position of which, we are told, has been changed 
only by its being s6t on a foundation of fact, instead 
of a foundation of superstition. Mill said that 
having learnt what the sunset clouds were made 
of, he still found that he admired them ,s much 
as ever ; " therefore," he said, " I saw at once that 
there was nothing to be feared from analysis/' 
And this is exactly what the positive school say 
of conscience. A shallower falsehood, however, 
: t is not easy to conceive. It is true that con- 
science in one way may, for a time at least, survive 
any kind of analysis. It may continue, with 
inidiminished distinctness, its old approvals and 
menaces. But that alone is nothing at all to the 
point. Conscience is of practical value, not only 
because it says them, as we think, with authority. 
If its authority goes, and its advice continues, it 
may indeed molest, but it will no longer direct us. 
Now, though the voice of conscience may, as the 
positive school say, survive their analysis of it, its 
authority will not. That authority has always 
taken the form of a menace, as well as of an ap- 
proval; and the menace at any rate, upon all 
positive principles, is nothing but big words that 
can break no bones. As soon as we realise it to 
be but this, its effect must cease instantly. The 
power of conscience resides not in what we hear 
it to be, but in what we believe it to be. A 
housemaid may be deterred from going to meet 



202 



Is Life Worth Living? 



her lover in the garden, because a howling ghost 
is believed to haunt the laurels ; but she will go 
to him fast enough when she discovers that the 
sounds that alarmed her were not a soul in torture, 
but the cat in love. The case of conscience is 
exactly analogous to this. 

And now let us turn again to the case in ques- 
tion. Men of such a character as I have been 
just describing may find conscience quite equal 
to giving a glow, by its approval, to their virtuous 
wishes ; but they will find it quite unequal to 
sustaining them against their vicious ones; and 
the more vigorous the intellect of the man, the 
more feeble will be the power of conscience. 
When a man is very strongly tempted to do a 
thing which he believes to be wrong, it is almost 
inevitable that he will test to the utmost the rea- 
sons of this belief; or if he does not do this before 
he yields to the temptation, yet if he does happen 
to yield to it, he will certainly do so after. Thus, 
unless we suppose human nature to be completely 
changed, and all our powers of observation com- 
pletely misleading, the inward condition of the 
class in question is this. However calm the 
outer surface of their lives may seem, under the 
surface there is a continual discord ; and also, 
though they alone may perceive it, a continued 
decadence In various degrees they all yield to 
temptation ; all men in the vigor of their man- 
hood do ; and conscience still fills them with its 



203 



old monitions and reproaches. But it cannot en- 
force obedience. They feel it to be the truth, but 
at the same time they know it to be a lie ; and 
though they long to be coerced by it, they find it 
cannot coerce them. Reason, which was once its 
minister, is now the tribune of their passions, and 
forbids them, in times of passion, to submit to it. 
They are not suffered to forget that it is not what 
it says it is, that 

" It never came from on high, 
And never rose from below : ■ 

and they cannot help chiding themselves with the 
irrepressible self-reproach, 

" Am I to be everawed 

By what I cannot but Know, ' 
Is a juggle born of the brain V 9 

Thus their conscience, though not stifled, is de- 
throned ; it is become a fugitive Pretender ; and 
that part of them that would desire its restoration 
is set down as an intellectual malignant, power- 
less indeed to restore its sovereign. 

" Invalidasque tibi tendens, heu non tua, palmas." 

Conscience, in short, as soon as its power is 
needed, is like their own selves dethroned within 
themselves, wringing its hands over a rebellion it 
is powerless to suppress. And then, when the 
storm is over, when the passions again subside, 
and their lives once more return to their wonted 
channels, it can only come back humbly and de~ 



204 



Is Life Worth Living? 



jected, and give them in a timid voice a faint 
dishonored blessing. 

Such lives as these are all of them, really in i\ 
state of moral consumption. The disease in it*> 
earlier stage is a very subtle one : and it may not 
be generally fatal for years, or even for genera 
tions. But it is a disease that can be transmitted 
from parent to child ; and its progress is none the 
less sure because it is slow, nor is it less fatal and 
painful because it may often give a new beauty 
to the complexion. On various constitutions it 
takes hold in various ways, and its presence is 
first detected by the sufferer under various trials, 
and betrayed to the observer by various symp- 
toms. What I have just been describing is the 
action that is at the root of it ; but with the in- 
dividual it does not always take that form. Often 
indeed it does ; but oftener still perhaps it is dis- 
covered not in the helpless yet reluctant yielding 
to vice, but in the sadness and the despondency 
with which virtue is practised— in the dull leaden 
hours of blank endurance or of difficult endeavor ; 
or in the little satisfaction that, when the struggle 
has ceased, the reward of struggle brings with it, 

An earlier, and perhaps more general symptom 
still, is one that is not personal. It consists not 
in the way in which men regard themselves, but 
in the way in which they regard others. In their 
own case, their habitual desire of right, and their 
habitual aversion to wrong, may have been 



The Practical Prospect. 



205 



enough to keep them from any open breach with 
conscience, or from putting it to an open shame. 
But its precarious position is revealed to them 
when they turn to others. Sin from which they 
recoil themselves they see committed in the life 
around them, and they find that it cannot excite 
the horror or disapproval, which from its supposed 
nature it should. They find themselves powerless 
to pass any general judgment, or to extend the 
law they live by to any beyond themselves. The 
whole prospect that environs them has become 
morally colorless ; and they discern in their atti- 
tude towards the world without, what it must one 
day come to be towards the world within. A 
state of mind like this is no dream. It is a ma- 
lady of the modern world — a malady of our own- 
generation, which can escape no eyes that will 
look for it. It is betraying itself every moment 
around us, in conversation, in literature, and in 
legislation. 

Such, then, is the condition of that large and 
increasing class on which modern thought is be- 
ginning to do its work. Its work must be looked 
for here, and not in narrower quarters; not 
amongst professors and lecturers, but amongst 
the busy crowd about us ; not on the platforms 
of institutions, or in the lay sermons of special- 
ists, but amongst politicians, artists, sportsmen, 
men of business, lovers — in "the tides of life, 
and in the storm oi action ;> — amongst men who 



206 



Is Life Worth Living ? 



have their own way to force or choose in the 
world, and their daily balance to strike between 
self-denial and pleasure — on whom the positive 
principles have been forced as true, and who have 
no time or talent to do anything else but live by 
them. It is amongst these that we must look to 
see what such principles really result in; and of 
these we must choose not those who would wel- 
come license, but those who long passionately to 
live by law. It is the condition of such men that 
I have been just describing. Its characteristics are 
vain self-reproach, joyless commendation, weary 
struggle, listless success, general indifference, and 
the prospect that if matters are going thus badly 
with them, they will go even worse with their 
children. 

Such a spectacle certainly is not one that has 
much promise for the optimist ; and the more we 
consider it, the more sad and ominous will it ap- 
pear to us. Indeed, when the present age shall 
realise its own condition truly, the dejection of 
which it is slowly growing conscious may perhaps 
give way to despair. This condition, however, is 
so portentous that it is difficult to persuade our- 
selves that it is what it seems to be, and that it 
is not a dream. But the more steadily we look 
at it, the more real will its appalling features ap- 
pear to us. We are literally in an age to which 
history can show no parallel, and which is new to 
tHe experience 01 humanity; and though the moral 

. rJm 



The Practical Prospect. 



207 



dejection we have been dwelling on may have had 
many seeming counterparts in other times, this is, 
as it were, solid substance, whereas they were 
only shadows. I have pointed out already in my 
first chapter how unexampled is the state in which 
the world now finds itself; but we will dwell once 
again upon its more general features. Within 
less than a century, distance has been all but 
annihilated, and the earth has practically, and to 
the imagination, been reduced to a fraction of its 
former size. Its possible resources have become 
mean and narrow, set before us as matters of every- 
day statistics. All the old haze of wonder is 
melting away from it ; and the old local enthusi- 
asms, which depended so largely on ignorance and 
isolation, are melting likewise. Knowledge has 
accumulated in a way never before dreamed of. 
The fountains of the past seem to have been 
broken up, and to be pouring all their secrets into 
the consciousness of the present. For the first 
time man's wide and varied history has become a 
coherent whole to him. Partly a cause and part- 
ly a result of this, a new sense has sprung up in 
him — an intense self-consciousness as to his own 
position ; and his entire view of himself is under- 
going a vague change : whilst the positive basis 
on which knowledge has been placed, has given it 
a constant and coercive force, and has made the 
same change common to the whole civilised world. 
Thought and ieeling amongst the western na- 



208 



Is Life Worth Living? 



tions are conforming to a single pattern : they are 
losing their old chivalrous character, their possi- 
bilities of isolated conquest and intellectual ad- 
venture. They are settling down into a uniform 
mass, that moves or stagnates like a modern army, 
and whose alternative lines of march have been 
mapped out beforehand. Such is the condition of 
the western world : and the western world is be- 
ginning now, at all points, to bear upon the east. 
Thus opinions that the present age is forming for 
itself have a weight and a volume that opinions 
never before possessed. They are the first begin- 
nings, not of natural, or of social, but of human 
opinion— an oecumenical self-consciousness on the 
part of man as to his own prospects and his 
own position. The great question is, what shape 
finally will this dawning self-consciousness take ? 
Will it contain in it that negation of the super- 
natural which our positive assertions are at pre- 
sent supposed to necessitate % If so, then it is 
not possible to conceive that this last development 
of humanity, this stupendous break from the past 
which is being accomplished by our understanding 
of it, will not be the sort of break which takes 
place when a man awakes from a dream, and finds 
all that he most prized vanished from him. It is 
impossible to conceive that this awakening, this 
discovery by man of himself, will not be the be- 
ginning of his decadence ; that it will not be the 
discovery on his part that he is a lesser and a 



The Practical Prospect. 



209 



lower thing than he thought he was, and that lr's 
condition will not sink till it tallies with his own 
opinion of it. 

If this be really the case, we shall not be able 
to dispose of pessimism by calling it a disease ; 
for the disease will be real and universal, and 
pessimism will be nothing but the scientific dis- 
cription of it. The pessimist is only silenced by 
being called diseased, when it is meant that the 
disease imputed to him is either hypochondriacal 
or peculiar to himself. But in the present case 
the disease is real, deep-seated, and extending 
steadily. The only question for us is, is it cur- 
able or incurable? This the event alone can 
answer : but as no future can be produced but 
through the agency of the present, the event, to 
a certain extent, must be in our own hands. For 
us, at any rate, the first thing to be done is to 
face boldly our own present condition, and the 
causes that are producing it. To become alive to 
our danger is the one way to escape from it. But 
the danger is at present felt rather than known. 
The class of men we are considering are conscious, 
as Mr. Matthew Arnold says, "of a void that 
mines the breast ;" but each thinks that this is a 
fancy only, and hardly dares communicate it to 
his fellows. Here and there, however, by aeci- 
aent, it is already finding unintended expression ; 
and signs come to the surface of the vague dis- 
trust and misgiving that are working under it. 

13 



210 



Is Life Worth Living? 



The form it takes amongst the general masses 
that are affected by it is, as might be expected, 
practical rather than analytical. They are con- 
scious of the loss that the loss of faith is to them ; 
and more or less coherently they long for its re- 
covery. Outwardly, indeed, they may often sneer 
at it ; but outward signs in such matters are very 
deceiving. Much of the bitter and arrogant certi- 
tude to be found about us in the expression of 
unbelief, is really like the bitterness of a woman 
against her lover, which has not been the cause 
of her resolving to leave him, but which has been 
caused by his having left her. In estimating what 
is really the state of feeling about us, we must not 
look only at the surface. "We must remember 
that deep feeling often expresses itself by contra- 
dicting itself ; also that it often exists where it is 
not expressed at all, or where it betrays rather 
than expresses itself; and, further, that during 
the hours of common intercourse, it tends, for the 
time being, to dissappear. People cannot be 
always exclaiming in drawing-rooms that they 
have lost their Lord ; and the fact may be tem- 
porarily forgotten because they have lost their 
portmanteau. All serious reflections are like 
reflections in water— a pebble will disturb them, 
and make a dull pond sparkle. But the sparkle 
dies, and the reflection comes again. And there 
are many about us, though they never confess 
their pain, and perhaps themselves hardly like to 



The Practical Prospect. 



211 



acknowledge it, whose hearts are aching for the 
religion that they can no longer believe in. Their 
lonely hours, between the intervals of gaiety, are 
passed with barren and sombre thoughts ; and a 
cry rises to their lips but never passes them. 

Amongst such a class it is somehow startling 
to find the most unlikely people at times placing 
themselves. Professor Clifford, for instance, who 
of all our present positivists is most uproarious 
in his optimism, has yet admitted that the reli- 
gion he invites us to trample on is, under certain 
forms, an ennobling and sustaining thing; and for 
such theism as that of Charles Kingsley's he has 
expressed his deepest reverence. Again, there 
is Professor Huxley. He denies with the most 
dogmatic and unbending severity any right to 
man to any supernatural faith ; and he iC will not 
for a moment admit" that our higher life will 
suffer in consequence."' And yet "the lover of 
moral beauty," he says wistfully, "struggling 
through a world of sorrow and sin, is surely as 
much the stronger for believing that sooner or 
later a vision of perfect peace and goodness will 
burst upon him, as the toiler up a mountain for 
the belief that beyond crag and snow lie home 
and rest." And he adds, as we have seen already, 
that could a faith like what he here indicates be 
placed upon a firm basis, mankind would cling to 

* "For my own part, I do not for one moment admit that morality is not 
strong enough to hold its own." — Pko. Huxley, ''Nineteenth Century," 
May, 1877. 



212 



Is Life Worth Living? 



it as "tenaciously as ever a drowing sailor did to 
a hen-coop." But all this widespread and increas- 
ing feeling is felt at present to be of no avail. 
The wish to believe is there ; but the belief is as 
far off as ever. There is a power in the air around 
us by which man's faith seems paralysed. The 
intellect, we were thinking but now, had acquired 
a new vigor and a clearer vision ; but the result 
of this growth is, with many, to have made it an 
incubus, and it lies upon all their deepest hopes 
and wishes 

" Like a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life/* 

Such is the condition of mind that is now 
spreading rapidly, and which, sooner or latter, we 
must look steadily in the face. Nor is it confined 
to those who are its direct victims. Those who 
still cling, and cling firmly, to belief are in an in- 
direct way touched by it. Religion cannot fail to 
be changed by the neighborhood of irreligion. If 
it is persecuted, it may burn up with greater fer- 
vour ; but if it is not persecuted, it must in some 
measure be chilled. Believers and unbelievers, 
separated as they are by their tenets, are yet in 
these days mixed together in all the acts and rela- 
tions of life. They are united by habits, by blood, 
and by friendship, and they are each obliged con- 
tinually to ignore or excuse what they hold to be 
the errors of the other. In a state of things like 



The Practical Prospect. 213 



this, it is plain that the conviction of believers can 
have neither the fierce intensity that belongs to a 
minority under persecution, nor the placid confi- 
dence that belongs to an overwhelming majority. 
They can neither hate the unbelievers, for they 
daily live in amity with them, nor despise alto- 
gether their judgment, for the most eminent 
thinkers of the day belong to them. By such 
conditions as these the strongest faith cannot fail 
to be affected. As regards the individuals who 
retain it, it may not lose its firmness, but it must 
lose something of its fervour ; and as regards its 
own future hold upon the human race, it is fctith 
no longer, but is anxious doubt, or, at best, a 
desperate trust. Dr. Newman has pointed out 
how even the Pope has recognised in the sedate 
and ominous rise of our modern earth-born posi- 
tivism some phenomenon vaster and of a different 
nature from the outburst of a petulant heresy; 
he seems to recognise it as a belligerent rather 
than a rebel.' 5 '" "One thing/' says Dr. Newman, 
" except by an almost miraculous interposition, 
cannot be ; and that is a return to the universal 
religious sentiment, the public opinion, of the 
mediaeval time. The Pope himself calls those 
centuries 'the ages of faith/ Such endemic faith 
may certainly be decreed for some future time; but 



. * These words may no doubt be easily pressed into a sense which Catholics 
would repudiate. But if not pressed unduly, they represent what will, I be- 
lieve, be admitted to be a fact. 



214 



Is Life Worth Living? 



as far as Ave have the means of judging at present, 
centuries must run out first." y? 

In this last sentence is indicated the vast and 
universal question, which the mind of humanity 
is gathering itself together to ask — will the faith 
that we are so fast losing ever asmin revive for 
us ? And my one aim in this book has been to 
demonstrate that the entire future tone of life, 
and the entire course of future civilisation, de- 
pends on the answer which this question receives. 

There is, however, this further point to consider. 
Need the answer we are speaking of be definite 
and universal ? or can we look forward to its re- 
maining undecided till the end of time ? Now I 
have already tried to make it evident that for the 
individual, at any rate, it must by-and-by be de- 
finite one way or the other. The thorough posi- 
tive thinker will not be able to retain in supreme 
power principles w^hich have no positive basis. 
He cannot go on adoring a hunger which he 
knows can never be satisfied, or cringing before 
fears which he knows will never be realised. And 
even if this should for a time be possible, his case 
will be w^orse, not better. Conscience, if it still 
remains with him, will remain not as a living 
thing—a severe but kindly guide — but as the 
menacing ghost of the religion he has murdered, 
and which comes to embitter degradation, not to 



* A letter to the Duke of Norfolk, by J. H. Newman, D.D., p. 35b 



The Practical Prospect, 



215 



raise it. The moral life, it is true, will still exist 
for him, but it will probably, in literal truth, 

" Creep on a broken wing 
Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear. 

But a state of things like this can hardly be look- 
ed forward to as conceivably of any long continu- 
ance. Religion would come back, or conscience 
would go. Nor do I think that the future which 
Dr. Newman seems to anticipate can be regarded 
as probable either . He seems to anticipate a con- 
tinuance side by side of faith and positivism, each 
with their own adherents, and fighting a ceaseless 
battle in which neither gains the victory. I ven- 
ture to submit that the new forms now at work 
in the world are not forms that will do their work 
by halves. When once the age shall have mas- 
tered them, they will be either one thing or the 
other — they will be either impotent or omnipo- 
tent. Their public exponents at present boast 
that they will be omnipotent ; and more and more 
the world about us is beginning to believe the 
boast. But the world feels uneasily that the im- 
port of it will be very different from what we are 
assured it is. One English writer, indeed, on the 
positive side, has already seen clearly what the 
movement really means, whose' continuance and 
whose consummation he declares to us to be a 
necessity. " Never," he says, " in the history of 
man has so terrific a calamity befallen the race as 



216 



Is Life Worth Living? 



that which all who look may now behold, advanc- 
ing as a deluge, black with destruction, resistless 
in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, 
engulfing our most precious creed, and burying 
our highest life in mindless desolation."* 

The question I shall now proceed to is the ex- 
act causes of this movement, and the chances and 
the powers that the human race has of resisting it. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THL LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION* 

" 1 am Sir Oracle, 
And when I ope my mouth let no dog bark 

BEFORE beginning to analyse the forces that 
are decomposing religious belief, it will be 
w^ell to remark briefly on the means by which 
these forces are applied to the w^orid at large. To 
a certain extent they are applied directly ; that is, 
many of the facts that are now becoming obvious 
the common sense of all men assimilates spon- 
taneously, and derives, unbidden, its own doubts 
or denials from them. But the chief powder of 
positivism is derived otherwise. It is derived 

*A Candid Examination of Theism. By Physicus. Triibner & Co.: 
187a 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 217 



not directly from the premisses that it puts before 
us, but from the intellectual prestige of its ex- 
ponents, who, to the destruction of private 
judgment, are forcing on us their own personal 
conclusions from them. This prestige, indeed, is 
by no means to be wondered at If men ever 
believed a teacher "for his works' sake/' the 
positive school is associated with enough signs 
and wonders. All those astonishing powers that 
man has acquired in this century are with much 
justice claimed by it as its works and gifts. The 
whole sensuous surroundings of our lives are its 
subjects, and are doing it daily homage; and there 
is not a conquest over distance, disease, or dark- 
ness that does not seem to bear witness to its 
intellectual supremacy. The opinion, therefore, 
that is now abroad in the world is that the positive 
school are the monopolists of unbiassed reason ; 
that reason, therefore, is altogether fatal to reli- 
gion ; and that those who deny this, only do so 
through ignorance or through wilful blindness. 
As long as this opinion lasts, the revival of faith 
is hopeless. What we are now about to examine 
is, how far this opinion is well founded. 

The arguments which operate against religion 
with the leaders of modern thought, and through 
their intellectual example on the world at large, 
divide themselves into three classes, and are de- 
rived from three distinct branches of thought and 
study. They may be distinguished as physical, 



218 



Is Life Worth Living? 



moral, and historical Few of these arguments, 
taken separately, can be called altogether new. 
Their new power has been caused by the simul- 
taneous filling up and completion of all of them ; 
by their transmutation from filmy visions into 
massive and vast realities ; from unauthorised 
misgivings into the most rigid and compelling of 
demonstrations : and still more, by the brilliant 
and sudden annihilation of the most obvious diffi- 
culties, which till very lately had neutralised and 
held their power in check. 

Of these three sets of arguments, the two first 
bear upon all religion, whilst the third bears upon 
it only as embodied in some exclusive form. Thus 
the physicist argues, for example, that conscious- 
ness being a function of the brain, unless the 
universe be a single brain itself, there can be no 
conscious God. * The moral philosopher argues 
that sin and misery being so prevalent, there can 
be no Almighty and all-merciful God. And the 
historian argues that all alleged revelations can be 
shown to have had analogous histories ; and that 
therefore, even if God exists, there is no one reli- 
gion through which He has specially revealed 
Himself. These are rough specimens solubly, 
so far as observation can carry us, mind with mat- 
ter. The great gulf between the two has at last 
been spanned. The bridge across it, that was so 
long seen in dreams and despaired of, has been 



*The argument has been used in this exact form by Professor Clifford. 



Thcf Logic of Scientific Negation. 219 



thrown triumphantly — a solid compact fabric, on 
which a hundred intellectual masons are still at 
work, adding stone on ponderous stone to it. 
Science, to put the matter in other words, has 
accomplished these three things. Firstly, to use 
the wor.ds of a well-known writer, " it has estab- 
lished a functional relation to exist between every 
fact of thinking, willing, or feeling, on the one side, 
and some molecular change in the body on the 
other side." Secondly, it has connected, through 
countless elusive stages, this organic human body 
with the universal lifeless matter. And thirdly, 
it claims to have placed the universal matter it- 
self in a new position for us, and to exhibit all 
forms of life as developed from it, through its own 
spontaneous motion. Thus for the first time, 
beyond the reach of question, the entire sensible 
universe is brought within the scope of the physi- 
cist. Everything that is, is matter moving. Life 
itself is nothing but motion of an infinitely com- 
plex kind. It is matter in its finest ferment. 
The first traceable beginnings of it are to be 
found in the phenomenon of crystallisation; we 
have there, we are told by the highest scientific 
authority, "the first gropings of the so-called 
vital force and we learn from the same quarter, 
that between these and the brain of Christ there 
is a difference in degree only, not in kind : they 
are each of them " an assemblage of molecules, 
acting and re-acting according to law." "We 



220 Is Life Worth Living? 



believe/' says Dr. Tyndall, "that every thought 
and every feeling has its definite mechanical cor- 
relative — that it is accompanied by a certain 
breaking up and re-marshalling of the atoms of 
the brain." u And though he of course admits 
that to trace out the processes in detail is infin- 
itely beyond our powers, yet " the quality of the 
problem and of our powers," he says, "are, we 
believe, so related, that a mere expansion of the 
latter would enable them to cope with the former." 
Nowhere is there any break in Nature; and "sup- 
posing," in Dr. Tyndall's words, " a planet carved 
from the sun, set spinning on an axis, and sent 
revolving round the sun at a distance equal to 
that of our earth," science points to the conclu- 
sion that as the mass cooled, it would flower out 
in places into just such another race as ours — 
creatures of as large discourse, and, like ourselves, 
looking before and after. The result is obvious. 
Every existing thing that we can ever know, or 
hope to know, in the whole inward as well as in 
the whole outward world— everything from a star 
to a thought, or from a flower to an affection, is 
connected with certain material figures, and with 
certain mechanical forces. All have a certain 
bulk and a certain place in space, and could con- 
ceivably be made the subjects of some physical 
experiment. Faith, sanctity, doubt, sorrow, and 
love, could conceivably be all gauged and detected 
by some scientific instrument — by a camera or by 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 221 



a spectroscope; and their conditions and their 
intensity be represented by some sort of diagram. 

These marvellous achievements, as I have said, 
have been often before dreamed of. Now they 
are accomplished. As applied to natural religion, 
the effect of them is as follows : 

Firstly, with regard to God, they have taken 
away every external proof of His existence, and, 
still more, every sign of His daily providence. 
They destroy them completely at a sudden and 
single blow, and send them falling about us like 
so many dead flies. God, as connected with the 
external world, was conceived of in three ways— 
as a Mover, as a Designer, and as a Superinten- 
dent. In the first two capacities He was required 
by thought ; in the last, He was supposed to be 
revealed.by experience. But now in none of these 
is He required or revealed longer. So far as 
thought goes, He has become a superfluity ; so 
far as experience goes, He has become a fanciful 
suggestion. 

Secondly, with regard to man, the life and soul 
are presented to us, not as an entity distinct from 
the body, and therefore capable of surviving it, 
but as a function of it, or the sum of its functions, 
which has demonstrably grown with its growth, 
which is demonstrably dependent upon even its 
minutest changes, and which, for any sign or hint 
to the contrary, will be dissolved with its disso- 
lution. 



222 



Is Life Worth Living? 



A God, therefore, that is the master of matter, 
and a human soul that is independent of it — any 
second world, in fact, of alien and trans-material 
forces, is reduced, on physical grounds, to an 
utterly unsupported hypothesis. Were this all, 
however, it would logically have on religion no 
effect at all. It would supply us with nothing 
but the barren verbal proposition that the imma- 
terial was not material, or that we could find no 
trace of it by merely studying matter. Its w x hole 
force rests on the following suppressed premiss, 
that nothing exists but what the study of matter 
conceivably could reveal to us ; or that, in other 
words, the immaterial equals the non-existent. 
The case stands thus. The forces of thought and 
spirit were supposed formerly to be quite distinct 
from matter, and to be capable of acting without 
the least connection with it. Now, it is shown 
that every smallest revelation of these to us, is 
accomplished by some local atomic movement, 
which, on a scientific instrument fine enough, 
would leave a distinct impression; and thus it is 
anmecl that no force is revealed through matter 
that is not inseparable from the forms revealing it. 
Here we see the meaning of that great modern 
axiom, that verification is the test of truth ; or 
that we can build on nothing as certain but what 
we can prove true. The meaning of the w r ord 
u proof" by itself may perhaps be somewhat 
hazy; but the meaning that positive science at- 



i 

The Logic of Scientific Negation. 223 



taches to it is plain enough. A fact is only proved 
when the evidence it rests upon leaves us no room 
for doubt — when it forces on every mind the same 
invincible conviction; that is, in others words, 
when, directly or indirectly, its material equiva- 
lent can be impressed upon our bodily senses. 

This is the fulcrum of the modern intellectual 
lever. Ask anyone oppressed and embittered by 
the want of religion the reason wiiy he does not 
again embrace it, and the answer will still be this 
— that there is no proof that it is true. Granting, 
says Professor Huxley, that a religious creed 
would be beneficial, " my next step is to ask for 
a proof of its dogmas." And with contemptuous 
passion another well-known writer, Mr. Leslie 
Stephen, has classified all beliefs, according as we 
can prove or not prove them, into realities and 
empty dreams. " The ignorant and childish," he 
says, " are hopelessly unable to draw the line be- 
tween dreamland and reality ; but the imagery 
which takes its rise in the imagination as dis- 
tinguished from the perceptions, bears indelible 
traces of its origin in comparative unsubstantiality 
and vagueness of outline." And "now," he ex- 
claims, turning to the generation around him, " at 
last your creed is decaying. People have dis- 
covered that you know nothing about it; that 
heaven and hell belong to dreamland ; that the 
impertinent young curate who tells me that I shall 
be burnt everlastingly for not sharing his super- 



22* 



Is Life Worth Living? 



stition, is just as ignorant as I myself, and that I 
know as much as my dog. * 

Such is that syllogism of the physical sciences 
which is now supposed to be so invincible against 
all religion, and which has already gone so far 
towards destroying the world's faith in it. Now 
as to the minor premiss, that there is no proof of 
religion, we may concede, at least provisionally, 
that it is completely true. What it- is really im- 
portant to examine is the major premiss, that we 
can be certain of nothing that we cannot support 
by proof. This it is plain does not stand on the 
same footing as the former, for it is of its very 
nature not capable of being proved itself. Its 
foundation is something far less definable— the 
general character for wisdom of the leading think- 
ers who have adopted it, and the general accept- 
ance of its consequences by the common sense of 
mankind. 

Now if we examine its value by these tests, 
the result will be somewhat startling. We find 
that not only are mankind at large as yet but 
very partially aware of its consequences, but that 
its true scope and meaning has not even dawned 
dimly on the leading thinkers themselves. Few 
spectacles, indeed, in the whole history of thought 
are more ludicrous than that of the modern posi- 
tive school with their great doctrine of verifica- 
tion. They apply it rigorously to one set of facts, 

* * * Dreams and Realities, " by Leslie Stephen. 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 225 



and they utterly fail to see that it is equally ap- 
plicable to another. They apply it to religion, 
and declare that the dogmas of religion are dreams; 
but ;yhen they pass from the dogmas of religion 
to those of morality, they not only do not use 
their test, but unconsciously they denounce it 
with the utmost vehemence. Thus Mr. Leslie 
Stephen, in the very essay from which I have just 
now quoted, not only has recourse, for giving 
weight to his arguments, to such ethical epithets 
as low, lofty, and even sacred, but he puts forward 
as his own motive for speaking, a belief which on 
his own showing is a dream. That motive, he 
says, is devotion to truth for its own sake — the 
only principle that is really worthy of man. His 
argument is simply this. It is man's holiest and 
most important duty to discover the truth at all 
costs, and the one test of truth is physical verifica- 
tion. Here he tells us we find the only high 
morality, and the men who cling to religious 
dream-dogmas which they cannot physically verifj r , 
can only answer their opponents, says Mr. Stephen, 
"by a shriek or a sneer. " "The sentiment," he 
proceeds, "which the dreamer most thoroughly 
hates and misunderstands, is the love of truth for 
its own sake. He cannot conceive why a man 
should attack a lie simply because it it is a lie." 
Mr. Stephen is wrong. That is exactly what the 
dreamer can do, and no one else but he ; and Mr. 
Stephen is himself a dreamer when he writes and 

14 



226 



Is Life Worth Living? 



feels like this. Why, let me ask him, should the 
truth be loved ? Do the " perceptions/' which 
are for him the only valid guides, tell him so ? 
The perceptions tell him, as he expressly says, 
that the truths of nature, so far as man is con- 
cerned with them, are "harsh" truths. Why 
should "harsh" things be loveable ? Or suppos- 
ing Mr. Stephen does love them, why is that love 
"lofty?" and why should he so brusquely com- 
mand all other men to share it ? Low and lofty 
— what has Mr. Stephen to do with words like 
these ? They are part of the language of dream- 
land, not of real life. Mr. Stephen has no right 
to them. If he has, he must be able to draw a 
hard and fast line between them ; for if his con- 
ceptions of them be " vague in outline," and " un- 
substantial," they belong by his own express defi- 
nition to the land of dreams. But this is what 
Mr. Stephen, with the solemn imbecility of his 
school, is quite incapable of seeing. Professor 
Huxley is in exactly the same case. He says, as 
we have seen already, that, come what may of it, 
our highest morality is to follow truth ; that the 
" lowest depths of immorality" is to pretend to 
believe what we see no reason for believing ; and 
that our only proper reasons for belief are some 
physical, some perceptible evidence. And yet at 
the same time he says that to " attempt to upset 
morality" by the help of the physical sciences is 
about as rational or as possible as to "attempt 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 227 

to upset Euclid by the help of the Rig Veda." 
Now on Professor Huxley's principles, this last 
sentence, though it sounds very weighty, is, if so 
ungracious a word may be allowed me, nothing 
short of nonsense. It would be the lowest depth 
of immorality, he says, to believe in God, when we 
see that there is no physical evidence to justify 
the belief. And physical science in this way 
he admits — he indeed proclaims — has upset reli- 
gion. How then has physical science in the same 
way failed to upset morality ? The foundation of 
morality, he says, is the belief that truth for its 
own sake is sacred. But what proof can he dis- 
cover of this sacredness ? Does any positive 
method of experience or observation so much as 
tend to suggest it ? We have already seen that 
it does not. What Professor Huxley's philosophy 
really proves to him is that it is true that nothing 
is sacred ; not that it is a sacred thing to discover 
the truth. 

We saw all this already when we were exami- 
ning his comparison of the perception of moral 
beauty to the perception of the heat of ginger. 
It is the same thing with which we are again 
dealing now, only we are approaching it from a 
slightly different point of view. What we saw 
before, was that without an assent to the religious 
dogmas, the moral dogmas can have no logical 
meaning. We have now seen that even were the 
two logically independent, they yet belong both 



228 



Is Life Worth Living? 



of them to the same order of things ; and that if 
our tests of truth prove the former to be illusions, 
they will, with precisely the same force, prove the 
same thing of the latter. 

But the most crucial test of all we have still to 
come to, which will put this conclusion in a yet 
clearer and a more unmistakable light. Thus far 
what we have seen has amounted to only this — - 
that if science can take from man his religious 
faith, it leaves him a being without any moral 
guidance. What we shall now see is that, by the 
same arguments, it will prove him to be not a 
moral being at all ; that it will prove not only 
that he has no rule by which to direct his will, 
but also that he has no will to direct. 

To understand this we must return to physical 
science, and to the exact results that have been 
accomplished by it. We have seen now com- 
pletely, from one point of view, it has connected 
mind with matter, and how triumphantly it is 
supposed to have unified the apparent dualism of 
things. It has revealed the brain to us as matter 
in a combination of infinite complexity, which it 
has reached at last through its own automatic 
workings ; and it has revealed consciousness to 
us as a function of this brain, and as altogether 
inseparable from it. But for this, the old dualism 
now supposed to be obsolete would remain undis- 
turbed. Indeed, if this doctrine were denied, 
such a dualism would be the only alternative. 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 229 



For every thought, then, that we think, and every 
feeling or desire that we feel, there takes place in 
the brain some definite material movement, on the 
force or figure of which the thoughts and feelings 
are dependent. Now if physical observations are 
to be the only things that guide us, one important 
fact will become at once evident. Matter existed 
and fermented long before the evolution of mind ; 
mind is not an exhibition of new forces, but the 
outcome of a special combination of old. Mental 
facts are therefore essentially dependent on mole- 
cular facts ; molecular facts are not dependent on 
mental. They may seem to be so, but this is only 
seeming. They are as much the outcome of mole- 
cular groupings and movements as the figures in 
a kaleidoscope are of the groupings and move- 
ments of the colored bits of glass. They are 
things entirely by the way ; and they can as little 
be considered links in any chain of causes as can 
the figure in a kaleidoscope be called the cause of 
the figure that succeeds it. 

The conclusion, however, is so distasteful to 
most men, that but few of them can be brought 
even to face it, still less to accept it. There is 
not a single physicist of eminence— none at least 
who has spoken publicly on the moral aspects of 
life — who has honestly and fairly considered it, 
and said plainly whether he accepts it, rejects it, 
or is in doubt about it. On the contrary, instead 
of meeting this question, they all do their best to 



230 



Is Life Worth Living? 



avoid it, and to hide it from themselves and others 
in a vague haze of mystery. , And there is a 
peculiarity in the nature of the subject that has 
made this task an easy one. But the dust they 
have raised is not impenetrable, and can, with a 
little patience, be laid all altogether. 

The phenomenon of consciousness is in one way 
unique. It is the only phenomenon with which 
science comes in contact, of which the scientific 
imagination cannot form a coherent picture. It 
has a side, it is true, that we can picture well 
enough— " the thrilling of the nerves/' as Dr. 
Tyndall says, "the discharging of the muscles, 
and all the subsequent changes of the organism." 
But of how these changes come to have another 
side, we can form no picture. This, it is perfectly 
true, is a complete mystery. And this mystery it 
is that our modern physicists seize on, and try to 
hide and lose in the shadow of it a conclusion 
which they admit that, in any other case^ a 
rigorous logic would force on them. 

The following is a typical example of the way 
in which they do this. It is taken from Dr. 
Tyndall. " The mechanical philosopher, as such," 
he says, " will never place a state of consciousness 
and a group of molecules in the position of mover 
and moved. Observation proves them to interact ; 
but in passing from one to the other, we meet a 
blank which the logic of deduction is unable to 
filL ... I lay bare unsparingly the initial diffi- 



The Logic of Scientific Negation, 231 



culty of the materialist, and tell him that the facts 
of observation which he considers so simple are 
' almost as difficult to be seized as the idea of a 
soul. 5 I go further, and say in effect: 'If you 
abandon the interpretation of grosser minds, who 
imagine the soul as a Psyche which could be 
thrown out of the window — an entity which is 
usually occupied we know not now, among the 
molecules of the brain, but which on due occasion, 
such as the intrusion of a bullet, or the blow of a 
club, can fly away into other regions of space — if 
abandoning this heathen notion you approach the 
subject in the only way in which approach is pos- 
sible — if you consent to make your soul a poetic 
rendering of a phenomenon which — as I have 
taken more pains than anyone else to show you 
— refuses the ordinary yoke of physical laws, then 
I, for one, would not object to this exercise of 
ideality.' I say it strongly, but with good tem- 
per, that the theologian who hacks and scourges 
me for putting the matter in this light is guilty of 
black ingratitude." 

Now if we examine this very typical passage, 
we shall see that in it are confused two questions 
which, as regards our own relation to them, are 
on a totally different footing. One of these ques- 
tions cannot be answered at all. The other can 
be answered in distinct and opposite ways. About 
the one we must rest in wonder ; about the other 
we must make a choice. And the feat which our 



232 



Is Life Worth Living? 



modern physicists are trying to perform is to hide 
the importunate nature of the second in the dark 
folds of the first This first question is, Why 
should consciousness be connected with the brain 
at all ? The second question is, What is it when 
connected ? Is it simply the product of the brain s 
movement ; or is the brain's movement in any de- 
gree produced by it? We only know it, so to 
speak, as the noise made by the working of the 
brain's machinery — as the crash, the roar, or the 
whisper of its restless colliding molecules. Is 
this machinery self-moving, or is it, at least, modu- 
lated, if not moved, by some force other than it- 
self ? The brain is the organ of consciousness, 
just as the instrument called an organ is an organ 
of music : and consciousness itself is as a tune 
emerging from the organ-pipes. Expressed in 
terms of this metaphor, our two questions are as 
follows. The first is, Why, when the air goes 
through them, the organ-pipes resonant ? The 
second is, What controls the mechanism by which 
the air is regulated — a musician, or a revolving 
barrel ? Now what our modern physicists fail to 
see is, not only that these two questions are dis- 
tinct in detail, but that also they are distinct 
in kind ; that a want of power to answer them 
means, in the two cases, not a distinct thing only, 
but also an opposite thing; and that our confessed 
impotence to form any conjecture at all as to the 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 233 



first, does not in the least exonerate us from choos- 
ing between conjectures as to the second. 

As to the first question, our discovery of the 
fact it is concerned with, and our utter inability 
to account for this fact, has really no bearing at 
all upon the great dilemma— the dilemma as to 
the unity or the dualism of existence, and the in- 
dependence or automatism of the life and will of 
man. All that science tells us on this first head 
the whole world may agree with, with the utmdst 
readiness; and if any theologian "hacks and 
scourges " Dr. Tyndall for his views thus far, he 
must, beyond all doubt, be a very foolish theo- 
logian indeed. The whole bearing of this matter 
modern science seems to confuse and magnify, 
and it fancies itself assaulted by opponents who 
in reality have no existence. Let a man be never 
so theological, and never so pledged to a faith in 
myths and mysteries, he would not have the least 
interest in denying that the brain, though we 
know not how, is the only seat for us of thought 
and mind and spirit. Let him have never so firm 
a faith in life immortal, yet this immortal has, he 
knows, put on mortalit}^, through an inexplicable 
contact with matter; and his faith is not in the 
least shaken by learning that this point of contact 
is the brain. He can admit with the utmost 
readiness that the brain is the only instrument 
through whicl supernatural life is made at the 
same time na ural life. He can admit that the 



234 



Is Life Worth Living ? 



moral state of a saint might be detected by some 
form of spectroscope. At first sight, doubtless, 
this may appear somewhat startling; but there 
is nothing really in it is that is either strange or 
formidable. Dr. Tyndall says that the view indi- 
cated can, "he thinks/' be maintained "against 
all attack." But why he should apprehend any 
attack at all, and why he should only " think" it 
would be unsuccessful, it is somewhat hard to 
conceive. To say that a spectroscope as applied 
to the brain might conceivably detect such a 
thing as sanctity, is little more than to say that our 
eyes as applied to the face can actually detect 
such a thing as anger. There is nothing in that 
doctrine to alarm the most mystical of believers* 
In the completeness with which it is now brought 
before us it is doubtless new and wonderful, and 
will doubtless tend presently to clarify human 
thought. But no one need fear to accept it as a 
truth; and probably before long we shall all accept 
it as a truism. It is not denying the existence 
of a soul to say that it cannot move in matter 
without leaving some impress in matter, any more 
than it is denying the existence of an organist to 
say that he cannot play to us without striking 
the notes of his organ. Dr. Tyndall then need 
hardly have used so much emphasis and iteration 
in affirming that " every thought and feeling has 
its definite mechanical correlative, that it is ac- 
companied by a certain breaking-up and remarsh- 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 235 

ailing of the atoms of the brain." And he is no 
more likely to be " hacked and scourged" for doing 
so than he wonld be for affirming that everv note 
we hear in a piece of music has its definite corre- 
lative in the mechanics of the organ, and that it 
is accompanied by a depression and a rising again 
of some particular key. In his views thus far the 
whole world may agree with him ; whilst when he 
adds so emphatically that in these views there is 
still involved a mystery, we shall not so much say 
that the world agrees with him as that he, like a 
good sensible man, agrees with the w^orld. The 
passage from mind to matter is, Dr. Tyndall says, 
unthinkable. The common sense of mankind has 
always said the same. We have here a some- 
thing, not which we are doubtful how to explain, 
but which we cannot explain at all We have not 
to choose or halt between alternative conjectures, 
for there are absolutely no conjectures to halt be- 
tween. We are now, as to this point, in the same 
state of mind in which we have always been, only 
this state of mind has been revealed to us more 
clearly. We are in theoretical ignorance, but we 
are in no practical perplexity. 

The perplexity comes in with the second ques- 
tion ; and it is here that the issue lies between 
the affirmation and the denial of a second and a 
supernatural order. We will see, first, how this 
question is put and treated by Dr. Tyndall, and 
we will then see what his treatment comes to. 



236 



Is Life Worth Living? 



Is it true, he asks, as many physicists hold it is, 
."that the physical processes are complete in 
themselves, and would go on just as they do if con- 
sciousness were not at all implicated," as an engine 
might go on working though it made no noise, or 
as a barrel-organ might go on playing even though 
there were no ear to listen to it ? Or do " states 
of consciousness enter as links into the chain of 
antecedence and sequence which gives rise to 
bodily actions 1" Such is the question in Dr. 
Tyndall's own phrases ; and here, in his own 
phrases also, comes his answer. "I have no 
power," he says, of imagining such states inter- 
posed between the molecules of the brain, and 
influencing the transference of motion among the 
molecules. The thing eludes all mental presenta- 
tion. But," he adds, "the production of con- 
sciousness by molecular motion is quite as unpre- 
sentable to the mental vision as the production of 
molecular motion by consciousness. If I reject 
one result, I reject both. I, however, reject nei- 
ther, and thus stand in the presence of two Incom- 
prehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible." 

Now what does all this mean ? There is one 
meaning of which the words are capable, which 
would make them 8 perfectly clear and coherent ; 
but that meaning, as we shall see presently, can- 
not possibly be Dr. Tyndall's. They would be 
perfectly clear and coherent if he meant this by 
them — that the brain was a natural instrument, 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 237 



in the hands of a supernatural player ; but that 
why the instrument should be able to be played 
upon, and how the player should be able to play 
upon it, were both matters on which he could 
throw no light. But elsewhere he has told us 
expressly that he does not mean this. This he 
expressly says is "the interpretation of grosser 
minds/' and science will not for a moment permit 
us to retain it. The brain contains no " entity 
usually occupied we know not how amongst its 
molecules/' but at the same time separable from 
them. According to him, this is a "heathen" 
notion, and, until we abandon it, " no approach/' 
he says, " to the subject is possible." What does 
he mean, then, when he tells us he rejects neither 
result; when he tells us that he believes that 
molecular motion produces consciousness, and also 
that consciousness in its turn produces molecular 
motion ? — when he tells us distinctly of these two 
that "observation proves them to interact ?" If 
such language as this means anything, it must 
have reference to two distinct forces, one material 
and the other immaterial. Indeed, does he not 
himself say so ? Does he not tell us that one of 
the beliefs he does not reject is the belief in 
" states of consciousness interposed between the 
molecules of the brain, and influencing the trans- 
ference of motion among the molecules?" It is 
perfectly clear, then, that these states are not 
molecules ; in other words, they are not material 



238 



7s Life Worth Living? 



But if not material, what are they, acting on mat- 
ter, and yet distinct from matter? What can 
they belong to but that "heathen" thing the soul 
— that " entity which could be thrown out of the 
window/' and which, as Dr. Tyndall has said else- 
where, science forbids us to believe in ? Surely 
for an exact thinker this is thought in strange 
confusion. " Matter," he says, " I define as that 
mysterious something by which all this is accom- 
plished and yet here we find him, in the face of 
this, invoking some second mystery as well. And 
for what reason % This is the strangest thing of 
all. He believes in his second Incomprehensible 
because he believes in his first Incomprehensible. 
"If I reject one result," he says, "I must reject 
both. I, however, reject neither." But why? 
Because one undoubted fact is a mystery, is every 
mystery an undoubted fact? Such is Dr. Tyn- 
dall's logic in this remarkable utterance : and if 
this logic be valid, we can at once prove to him 
the existence of a personal God, and a variety 
of other "heathen" doctrines also. But, applied 
in this way, it is evident that the argument fails 
to move him ; for a belief in a personal God is 
one of the first things that his science rejects. 
What shall we say of him, then, when he applies 
the argument in his own way ? We can say 
simply this — that his mind for the time being is 
in a state of such confusion, that he is incapable 
really of clearly meaning anything. What his 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 239 



position logically must be — what, on other occa- 
sions, he clearly avows it to be — is plain enough. 
It is essentially that of a man confronted by one 
Incomprehensible, not confronted by two. But, 
looked at in certain ways, or rather looked from 
in certain ways, this position seems to stagger 
him. The problem of existence reels and grows 
dim before him, and he fancies that he detects 
the presence of two Incomprehensibles, when he 
has really, in his state of mental insobriety, only 
seen one Incomprehensible double. If this be 
not the case, it must be one that, intellectually, 
is even weaker than this. It must be that, not 
of a man with a single coherent theory which his 
intellect in its less vigorous moments sometimes 
relaxes its hold upon, but it must be that of a 
man with two hostile theories which he vainly 
imagines to be one, and which he inculcates alter- 
nately, each with an equal emphasis. 

If this bewilderment were peculiar to Dr. Tyn- 
dall, I should have no motive or meaning in thus 
dwelling on it. But it is no peculiarity of his. It 
is characteristic of the whole school he belongs to; 
it is inherent in our whole modern positivism — 
the whole of our exact and enlightened thought. 
I merely choose Dr. Tyndall as my example, not 
because there is more confusion in his mind than 
there is in that of his fellow-physicists, but because 
he is, as it were, the enfant terrible of his family, 



240 



Is Life Worth Living? 



who publicly lets out the secrets which the others 
are more careful to conceal. 

But I have not done with this matter yet. We 
are here dealing with the central problem of things, 
and we must not leave it till we have made it as 
plain as possible. I will therefore re-state it in 
terms of another metaphor. Let us compare the 
universal matter, with its infinity of molecules; to 
a number of balls on a billiard-table, set in motion 
by the violent stroke of a cue. The balls at once 
begin to strike each other and rebound from the 
cushions at all angles and in all directions, and 
assume with regard to each other positions of 
every kind. At last six of them collide or cannon 
in a particular corner of the table, and thus group 
themselves so as to form a human brain; and their 
various changes thereafter, so long as the brain 
remains a brain, represent the various changes 
attendant on a man's conscious life. Now in this 
life let us take some moral crisis. Let us suppose 
the low desire to cling to some pleasing or com- 
forting superstition is contending with the heroic 
desire to face the naked truth at all costs. The 
man in question is at first about to yield to the 
low desire. For a time there is a painful struggle 
in him. At last there is a sharp decisive pang ; 
the heroic desire is the conqueror, the supersti- 
tion is cast away, and "though truth slay me," 
says the man, "yet will I trust in it." Such i> 
the aspect of the question when approached from 



The Logic of Scientific^ Negation. 241 



one side. But what is it when approached from 
the other? The six billiard balls have simply 
changed their places. When they corresponded 
to low desire, they formed, let us say, an oval] 
when they corresponded to the heroic desire, they 
formed, let us say, a circle. Now what is the 
cause and what the conditions of this change ? 
Clearly a certain impetus imparted to the balls, 
and certain fixed laws under which that impetus 
operates. The question is what laws and what 
impetus are these ? Are they the same or not the 
same, now the balls correspond to consciousness, 
as they were before, when the balls did not cor- 
respond to it ? One of two things must happen. 
Either the balls go on moving by exactly the same 
laws and forces they have always moved by, and 
are in the grasp of the same invincible necessity, 
or else there is some new and disturbing force 
in the midst of them, with which we have to 
reckon. But if consciousness is inseparable from 
matter, this cannot be. Do the billiard-balls when 
so grouped as to represent consciousness generate 
some second motive power distinct from, at vari- 
ance with, and often stronger than, the original 
impetus ? Clearly no scientific thinker can admit 
this. To do so would be to undermine the entire 
fabric of science, to -contradict what is its first 
axiom and its last conclusion. If then the motion 
of our six billiard balls has anything, when it cor- 
responds to consciousness, distinct in kind from 

15 



242 



Is Life Worth Living? 



ivhat it always had, it can only derive this from 
one cause. That cause is a second cue, tamper- 
ing with the balls and interfering with them, or 
even more than this — a second hand taking them 
up and arranging them arbitrarily in certain 
figures. 

Science places the positive school on the horns 
of a dilemma. The mind or spirit is either ar- 
ranged entirely by the molecules it is connected 
with, and these molecules move with the same 
automatic necessity that the earth moves with ; 
or else these molecules are, partially at least, ar- 
ranged by the mind or spirit. If we do not accept 
the former theory we must accept the latter: there 
is no third course open to us. If man is not an 
automaton, his consciousness is no mere function 
of any physical organ. It is an alien and disturb- 
ing element. Its impress on physical facts, its 
disturbance of physical laws, maybe doubtless the 
only things through which we can perceive its 
existence ; but it is as distinct from the things by 
which we can alone at present perceive it, as a 
hand unseen in the dark, that should arrest or 
change the course of a phosphorescent billiard- 
ball. Once let us deny even in the most qualified 
way that the mind in the most absolute way is 
a material machine, an automaton, and in that 
denial we are affirming a second and immaterial 
universe, independent of the material, and obey- 
in^' different laws. Bu^ of this universe, if it 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 243 



exists, no natural proof can be given, because ex 
hypothesi it lies quite beyond the region of nature. 

One theory then of man's life is that it is a 
union of two orders of things ; another that it is 
single, and belongs to only one. And of these 
theories — opposite, and mutually exclusive, Dr. 
Tyndall, and modem positivism with him, says 
"I reject neither."'" 



* The feebleness and vacillation of Dr. Tyndall's whole views of things, 
as soon as they bear on matters that are of any universal moment, is so typi- 
cal of the entire positive thought of the day, that I may with advantage give 
one or two further illustration of it. Although in one place he proclaims 
loudly that the emergence of consciousness from matter must ever remain a 
mystery, he yet shows indication of a hope that it may yet be solved. He 
quotes with approval, and with an implication that he himself leans to the 
view expressed in them, the following words of Ueberweg, whom he calls 
"one of the subtlest heads that Germany has produced." " What happens 
in the brain," says Ueberweg, "would in my opinion not be possible if the 
process which here appears in its greatest concentration, did not obtain gen- 
erally, only in a vastly diminished degree. Take a pair of mice and a cask 
of flour. By copious nourishment the animals increase and multiply, and 
in the same proportion sensations and feelings augment. The quantity of 
these preserved by the first pair is not simply diffused among their descend- 
ants, for in that case the last would feel more fully than the first. The 
sensations and the feelings must necessarily be referred back to the flour, 
where they exist, weak and pale it is true, and not concentrated, as in the 
brain." " We may not," Dr. Tyndall adds, by way of a gloss to this, " be 
able to taste or smell alcohol in a tub of fermented cherries, but by distilla- 
tion we obtain from them concentrated Kirschwasser. Hence Ueberweg's 
comparison of the brain to a still, which concentrates the sensation and 
feeling pre-existing, but diluted, in the food." 

Let us now compare this with the following, "It is no explanation," says 
Dr. Tyndall, "to say that objective and subjective are two sides of one and 
the same phenomenon. Why should phenomena have two sides ? There are 
plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does 
water think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a window pane ? If 
not, why should the molecular motions of the brain be yoked to this mys- 
terious companion consciousness ? 

Here we have two views, diametrically opposed to each other, the one 
suggested with approval, and the other implied as his own, by the same 
writer, and in the same short essay. The first view is that consciousness is 



244 



Is Life Worth Living? 



Now this statement of their position, if taken 
as they state it, is of course nonsense. It is im- 
possible to consider matter as "that mysterious 
something by which all that is is accomplished 
and then to solve the one chief riddle of things 

the general property of all matter, just as motion is. The second view i9 
that consciousness is not the general property of matter, but the inexplicable 
property of the brain only. 

Here again we have a similiar inconsistency. Upon one page Dr. Tyndal! 
says that when we have "exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, a 
mighty Mystery still looms beyond us. We have made no step towards its 
solution. And thus it will ever loom." And on the opposite page he says 
thus : "If asked whether science has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, 
the problem of the universe, I must shake my head in doubt." 

Further, I will remind the reader of Dr. Tyndall's arguments, on one 
occasion, against any outside builder or creator of the material universe. 
He argued that such did not exist, because his supposed action was not 
definitely presentable. "I should inquire after its shape," he says: — "Has 
it legs or arms ? If not, I would wish it to be made clear to me how a thing 
without these appliances can act so perfectly the part of a builder?" He 
challenged the theist (the theist addressed at the time was Dr. Martineau) 
to give him some account of his God's workings; and ''When he does this," 
said I>r. Tyndall, "I shall 'demand of him an immediate exercise' of the 
power of 'definite mental presentation.'" If he fails here, Dr. Tyndall 
argues, his case is at once disproved ; for nothing exists that is not thus pre- 
sentable. Let us compare this with his dealing with the fact of conscious- 
ness. Consciousness, he a .mits, is not thus presentable; and yet conscious* 
ness, he admits, exists. 

Instances might be multiplied of the same vacillation and confusion of 
thought — the same feminine inability to be constant to one train of reason- 
ing. But those just given suffice. What weight can we attach to a man's 
philosophy, who after telling us that consciousness may possibly be an in- 
herent property of matter, of which "the receit of reason is a limbec only,' 
adds in the same breath almost, that matter generally is certainly not con- 
scious, and that consciousness comes to the brain we know not whence nor 
wherefore? What shall we say of a man who in one sentence tells us that it 
is impossible that science can ever solve the riddle of things, and telis us in 
the next sentence that it is doubtful if this impossibility will be accomplished 
within the next fifty years? — who argues that God is a mystery, and there- 
fore God is a fiction ; who admits that consciousness is a fact,- and yet pro- 
claims that it is a mystery ; and who says that the fact of matter producing 
consciousness being a mystery, proves the mystery of consciousness acting 
on matter to be a fact ? 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 245 



by a second mysterious something that is not 
material. Nor can we " reject/' as the positivists 
say they do, an " outside builder " of the world, 
and then claim the assistance of an outside 
orderer of the brain. The positivists would pro- 
bably tell us that they do not do so, or that they 
do not mean to do so. And we may w^ell believe 
them. Their fault is that they do not know what 
they mean. I will try to show them. 

First, they mean something, with which, as I 
have said already, we may all agree. They mean 
that matter moving under certain laws (which 
may possibly be part and parcel of its own es- 
sence) combines after many changes into the 
human brain, every motion of which has its defi- 
nite connection with consciousness, and its definite 
correspondence to some state of it, And this 
fact is a mystery, though it may be questioned if 
it be more mysterious why matter should think of 
itself, than why it should move of itself. At any 
rate, thus far we are all agreed ; and whatever 
mystery we may be dealing with, it is one that 
leaves us in ignorance but not in doubt. The 
doubt comes in at the next step. We have then 
not to wonder at one fact, but, the mystery being 
in either case the same, to choose between two 
hypotheses. The first is that there is in con- 
sciousness one order of forces only, the second is 
that there are two. And when the positive school 
say that they reject neither of these, what they 



248 



Is Life Worth Living? 



really mean to say is that as to the second they 
neither dare openlv do one thins? or the other — to 
deny it or accept it, but that they remain like an 
awkward child when offered some more pudding, 
blushing and looking down, and utterly unable to 
say either yes or no. 

Now the question to ask the positive school is 
this. Why are they in this state of suspense ? 
" There is an iron strength in the logic/' as Dr. 
Tynclall himself says, that rejects the second order 
altogether. , The hypothesis of its existence ex- 
plains no fact of observation. The scheme of 
nature, if it cannot be wholly explained without 
it, can, at any rate, be explained better without 
it than with it. Indeed from the stand-point of 
the thinker who holds that all that is is matter, 
it seems a thing too superfluous, too unmeaning, 
to be even worth denial And yet the positive 
school announce solemnly that they will not deny 
it. Now why is this \ It is true that they can- 
not prove its non-existence ; but this is no reason 
for professing a solemn uncertainty as to its exis- 
tence. We cannot prove that each time a cab 
drives down Regent Street a stick of barley-sugar 
is not created in Sirius. But we do not proclaim 
to the world our eternal ignorance as to whether 
or no this is so. Why then should our positivists 
treat in this way the alleged immaterial part of 
consciousness ? Why this emphatic protestation 
on their part that there may exist a something 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 247 



which, as far as the needs of their science go, is 
superfluous, and as far as the logic of their science 
goes is impossible % The answer is plain, Though 
their science does not need it, the moral value of 
life does. As to that value they have certain 
foregone conclusions, which they cannot resolve 
to abandon, but which their science can make no 
room for. Two alternatives are offered them— 
to admit that life has not the meaning they 
thought it had, or that their system has not the 
completeness they thought it had ; and of these 
two alternatives they will accept neither. They 
could tell us " with an iron strength of logic" 
that all human sorrow was as involuntary and as 
unmeaning as sea-sickness ; that love and faith 
were but distillations of what exists diluted in 
mutton-chops and beer ; and that the voice of 
one crying in the wilderness was nothing but an 
automatic metamorphosis of the locusts and wild 
honey. They could tell us " with an iron strength 
of logic" that all the thoughts and moral struggles 
of humanity were but as the clanging whirr of a 
machine, which if a little better adjusted might 
for the future go on spinning in silence. But 
they see that the discovery on man's part that his 
life was nothing more than this would mean a 
complete change in its mechanism, and that 
thenceforward its entire action would be different. 
They therefore seek a refuge in saying it may be 
more than this. But what do they mean by may 



248 



Is Life Worth Living? 



he ? Do tliey mean that in spite of all that science 
can teach them, in spite of that uniformity abso- 
lute and omnipresent which alone it reveals to 
them, which clay by clay it is forcing with more 
* vividness on their imaginations, and which seems 
to have no room for anything besides itself— clo 
they mean that in spite of this there may still be 
a second something, a power of a different order, 
acting on man's brain and grappling with its auto- 
matic movements ? Do they mean that that " hea- 
then" and "gross" conception of an immaterial 
soul is probably after all the true one ? Either 
they must mean this or else they must mean the 
exact opposite. There is no third course open 
to them. ? Their opinion, as soon as they form 

*It is true that one of the favorite teachings of the positive school is, 
that as to this question the proper attitude is that of Agnosticism ; in other 
words, that a state of perpetual suspense on this subject is the only rational 
one. They are asked, have we a soul, a will, and consequently any moral 
responsibility ? And the answer is that they must shake their heads in 
doubt. It is true they tell us that it is but as men of science that they shake 
their heads. But Dr. Tjmdall tells us what this admission means. " If the 
materialist is confounded," he says, "and science rendered dumb, who else 
is prepared with an answer ? Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our 
ignorance, priest and philosopher — one and all." In like manner, referring 
to the feeling which others have supposed to be a sense of God's presence 
and majesty; this, for the " man of science," he says is the sense of a 
"power which gives fulness and force to his existence, but which he can 
neither analyse nor comprehend." Which means, that because a physical 
specialist cannot analyse this sense, it is therefore incapable of analysis. A 
bishop might with equal propriety use just the same language about a glass 
of port wine, and argue with equal cogency that it was a primary and simple 
element. What is meant is, that the facts of the materialist are the only 
facts we can be certain of ; and because these can give man no moral guid- 
ance, that therefore man can have no moral guidance at all. 

Let us illustrate the case by some example that is mentally presentable. 
Some ruined girl, we will say, oppressed with a sense of degradation comes 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 249 



form one, must rest either on this extreme or that. 
They will see, as exact and scientific thinkers, 
that if it be not practically certain that there is 
some supernatural entity in us, it is practically 
certain that there is not one. To say merely that 
it may exist is but to put an ounce in one scale 
whilst there is a ton in the other. It is an admis- 
sion that is utterly dead and meaningless. They 
can only entertain the question of its existence 
because its existence is essential to man as a moral 
being. The only reason that can tempt us to say 

to Dr. Tyndall and lays her case before him. " I have heard you are a very 
wise man, " she says to him, " and that 3^011 have proved that the priest is all 
wrong, who prepared me a year ago for my confirmation. Now tell me, I 
beseech you tell me, is mine really the desperate state I have been taught to 
think it is ? May my body be likened to the temple of the Holy Ghost 
defiled? or do I owe it no more reverence than i owe the Alhambra Thea- 
tre ? Am I guilty, and must I seek repentance ? or am I not guilty, and mr.y 
I go on just as I please?" " My dear girl," Dr. Tyndall replies to her, "I 
must shake my head in doubt. Come, let us lower our heads, and acknow- 
ledge our ignorance as to whether you are a wretched girl or no. Material- 
ism is confounded, and science rendered dumb by questions such as yours ; 
they can, therefore, never be answered, and must always remain open. I 
may add, however, that if you ask me personally whether I consider you to 
be degraded, I lean to the affirmative. But I can give you no reason in sup- 
port of this judgment, so you may attach to it what value you will." 

Such is the position of agnostics, when brought face to face with the 
world. They are undecided only about one question, and this is the one 
question which cannot be left undecided. "Men cannot remain agnostics as 
to belief that their actions must depend upon, any more than a man who is 
compelled to go on walking can refrain from choosing one road or other when 
there are two open to him. Nor does it matter that our believing may in 
neither case amount to a complete certitude. It is sufficient that the balance 
of probability be on one side or the other. Two ounces will out-weigh one 
ounce, quite as surely as a ton will. But what our philosophers profess to 
teach us (in so far as they profess to be agnostics, and disclaim being dogma- 
tists) is, that there is no balance either way. The message they shout to us 
is, that they have no message at all ; and that because they are without one, 
the whole world is in the same condition. 



250 



Is Life Worth Living? 



it may be forces us in the same moment to say that 
that it must be, and that it is. 

Which answer eventually the positive school 
will choose, and which answer men in general 
will accept, I make as I have said before, no at- 
tempt to answer. My only purpose to show is, 
that if man has any moral being at ail, he has it 
in virtue of his immaterial will— a force, a some- 
thing of which physical science can give no ac- 
count whatever, and which it has no shadow of 
authority either for affirming or for denying; and 
further, that if we are not prevented by it from 
affirming his immaterial will, we are not prevented 
from affirming his immortality, and the existence 
of God likewise. 

And now I come to that third point which I 
said I should deal with here, but which I have 
not yet touched upon. Every logical reasoner 
who admits the power of will must admit not 
only the possibility of miracles, but also the 
actual effect of their daily and hourly occurrence. 
Every exertion of the human w T ill is a miracle in 
the strictest sense of the word ; only it takes place 
privately, within the closed w r alls of the brain. 
The molecules of the brain are arranged and 
ordered by a supernatural agency. Their natural 
automatic movements are suspended, or directed 
and interfered with. It is true that in common 
usa° i e the word miracle has a more restricted 
sense. It is applied generally not to the action 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 251 



of man's will, but of God's. But the sense in 
both cases is essentially the same. God's will is 
conceived of as disturbing the automatic move- 
ments of matter without the skull, in just the 
same way as man's will is conceived of as disturb- 
ing those of the brain within it. Nor, though 
the aliened manifestations of the former do more 
violence to the scientific imagination than do 
those of the latter, are they in the eye of reason 
one whit more impossible. The erection of a 
pyramid at the will of an Egyptian king would as 
much disturb the course of nature as the removal 
of a mountain by the faith of a Galilean fisher- 
man; whilst the flooding of the Sahara at the 
will of a speculating company would interfere 
with the weather of Europe far more than the 
most believing of men ever thought that any 
answer to prayer would. 

It will thus be seen that morality and religion 
are, so far as science goes, on one and the same 
footing— of one and the same substance, and that 
as assailed by science they either fall together or 
stand together. It will be seen too that the 
power of science against them resides not in itself, 
but in a certain intellectual fulcrum that we our- 
selves supply it with. That its methods can dis- 
cover no trace of either of them, of itself proves 
nothing, unless we first lay down as a dogma that 
its methods of discovery are the only methods. 
If we are prepared to abide by this, there is little 



252 Is Life Worth Living r 



more to be said. The rest, it is becoming daily 
plainer, is a very simple process ; and what we 
have to urge against religion will thenceforth 
amount to this. There is no supernatural, be- 
cause everything is natural; there is no spirit, 
because everything is matter ; or there is no air 
because everything is earth ; there is no fire, be- 
cause everything is water; a rose has no smell 
because our eyes cannot detect any. 

This, in its simplest form, is the so-called argu- 
ment of modern materialism. Argument, how- 
ever, it is quite plain it is not. It is a mere dog- 
matic statement, that can give no logical account 
of itself, and must trust, for its acceptance, to the 
world's vague sense of its fitness. The modern 
world, it is true, has mistaken it for an argument, 
and has been cowed by it accordingly; but the 
mistake is a simple one, and can be readily ac- 
counted for. The dogmatism of denial was for- 
merly a sort of crude rebellion, inconsistent with 
itself, and vulnerable in a thousand places. Na- 
ture, as then known, was, to all who could weigh 
the wonder of it, a thing inexplicable without 
some supernatural agency. Indeed, marks of 
such an agency seemed to meet men everywhere. 
But now all this has changed. Step by step 
science has been unravelling the tangle, and has 
loosened with its human fingers the knots that 
once seemed deo digni vindice. It has enabled 
us to see in nature a complete machine, needing 



The Logic of Scientific Negation. 253 



no aid from without. It lias made a conception 
of things rational and coherent that was formerly 
absurd and arbitrary. Science has done all this ; 
but this is all that it has done. The dogmatism 
of denial it has left as it found it, an unverified 
and unverifiable assertion. It has simply made 
this dogmatism consistent with itself. But in 
doing this, as men will soon come to see, it has 
done a great deal more than its chief masters bar- 
gained for. Nature, as explained by science, is 
nothing more than a vast automaton; and man 
with all his ways and works is simply a part of Na- 
ture, and can, by no device of thought, be detached 
from or set above it. He is as absolutely autom- 
atic as a tree is, or as a flower is ; and is as incap- 
able as a tree or flower of any spiritual respon- 
sibility or significance. Here we see the real 
limits of science. It will explain the facts of life 
to us, it is true, but it will not explain the value 
that hitherto we have attached to them. Is that 
solemn value a fact or fancy? As far as proof 
and reason go, we can answer either way. We 
have two simple and opposite statements set 
against each other, between which argument will 
give us no help in choosing, and between which 
the only arbiter is a judgment formed upon utterly 
alien grounds. As for proof, the nature of the 
case does not admit of it. The world of moral 
facts, if it existed a thousand times, could give rrr> 
more proof of its existence than it does now. ± f 



254 Is Life Worth Living? 

on other grounds we believe that it does exist, 
then signs, if not proofs of it, at once surround us 
everywhere. But let the belief in its reality fail 
us, and instantly the whole cloud of witnesses 
vanishes. For science to demand a proof that 
shall convince it on its own premisses is to de- 
mand an impossibility, and to involve a contra- 
diction in terms. Science is only possible on the 
assumption that nature is uniform. Morality is 
only possible on the assumption that this uniform- 
ity is interfered with by the will. The world of 
morals is as distinct from the world of science as 
a wine is from the cup that holds it ; and to say 
that it does not exist because science can find no 
trace of it, is to say that a bird has not flown over 
a desert because it has left no footprints in the 
sand. And as with morals, so it is with religion. 
Science will allow us to deny or to affirm both. 
Eeason will not allow us to deny or affirm only 
one. 



CHAPTER X. 

MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 

" Credo quia impossibile est." 

TF we look calmly at the possible' future of 
i- human thought, it will appear from what we 
have jusc seen, that physical science of itself can 



Morality and Natural llieism. 255 



do little to control or cramp it ; nor until man 
consents to resign his belief in virtue and his cwn 
dignity altogether, will it be able to repress re- 
ligious faith, should other causes tend to produce 
a new outbreak of it. But the chief difficulties 
in the matter are still in store for us. Let us see 
never so clearly that science, if we are moral 
beings, can do nothing to weaken our belief in 
God and immortality, but still leaves us free, if 
we will, to believe in them, it seems getting 
clearer and yet more clear that these beliefs are 
inconsistent with themselves, and conflict with 
these very moral feelings, of which they are in- 
voked as an explanation. Here it is true that 
reason does confront us, and what answer to 
make to it is a very serious question. This ap- 
plies even to natural religion in its haziest and 
most compliant form ; and as applied to any form 
of orthodoxy its force is doubled. What we have 
seen thus far is, that if there be a moral world at 
all, our knowledge of nature contains nothing in- 
consistent with theism. We have now to inquire 
how far theism is inconsistent with our concep- 
tions of the moral world. 

In treating these difficulties, we will for the 
present consider them as applying only to religion 
in general, not to any special form of it. The posi- 
tion of orthodoxy we will reserve for a separate 
treatment. For convenience' sake, however, I 
shall take as a symbol of all religion the vaguer 



258 



Is Life Worth Living? 



and more general teachings of Christianity ; but 
I shall be adducing them not as teachings re- 
vealed by heaven, but simply as developed by the 
religious consciousness of men. 

To begin* then with the great primary difficul- 
ties : these, though they take various forms, can 
all in the last resort be reduced to two — the exis- 
tence of evil in the face of the power of God, and 
the freedom of man's will in the face of the will 
of God. And what I shall try to make plain 
with respect to these is this : not that they are 
not difficulties— not that they are not insoluble 
difficulties ; but that they are not difficulties due 
to religion or theism, nor by abandoning theism 
can we in any way escape from them. They 
start into being not with the belief in God, and a 
future of rewards and punishments, but with the 
belief in the moral law and in virtue, and they are 
common to all systems in which the worth of vir- 
tue is recognised. 

The vulgar view of the matter cannot be better 
stated than in the following account given by J. 
S. Mill of the anti-religious reasonings of his 
father. He looked upon religion, says his son, 
u as the greatest enemy of morality ; first, by set- 
ting up fictitious excellences — belief in creeds, 
devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected 
with the good of human-kind, and causing them 
to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues ; 
but above all by radically vitiating the standard of 



Morality and Natural Theism. 



257 



morals, making it consist in doing the will of a 
being, on whom, indeed, it lavishes all the phrases 
of adulation, but whom, in sober truth, it depicts 
as eminently hateful. I have a hundred times 
heard him say that all ages and nations have re- 
presented their gods as tricked in a constantly 
increasing progression ; that mankind had gone 
on adding trait after trait, till they reached the 
most perfect expression of wickedness which the 
human mind can devise, and have called this 
God, and prostrated themselves before it The 
ne plus ultra of wickedness he considered to be 
embodied in what is commonly presented to man- 
kind as the creed of Christianity. Think (he used 
to say) of a being who would make a hell — who 
would create the human race with the infallible 
foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, 
that the great majority of them should be con- 
signed to horrible and everlasting torment." James 
Mill, adds his son, knew quite well that Chris- 
tians were not, in fact, as demoralized by this 
monstrous creed as, if they were logically consis- 
tent, they ought to be. " The same slovenliness 
of thought (he said) and subjection of the reason 
to fears, wishes and affections, which enable them 
to accept a theory involving a contradiction in 
terms, prevent them from perceiving the logical 
consequence of the theory." 

Now, in spite of its coarse and exaggerated 
a limony, this passage doubtless expresses a 

16 



25S 



Is Life Worth Living? 



great truth, which presently I shall go on to con- 
sider. But it contains also a very characteristic 
falsehood, of which we must first divest it. God 
is here represented as making a hell, with the ex- 
press intention of forcibly putting men into it, 
and His main hatefulness consists in this capri- 
cious and wanton cruelty. Such a representation 
is, however, an essentially false one. It is not only 
not true to the true Christian teaching, but it is 
absolutely opposed to it. The God of Christian- 
ity does not make hell ; still less does he deliber- 
ately put men into it. It is made by men them- 
selves ; the essence of its torment consists in the 
loss of God ; and those that lose Him, lose Him 
by their own act, from having deliberately made 
themselves incapable of loving Him. God never 
wills the death of the sinner. It is to the sinner's 
own will that the sinner's death is due. 

All this rhetoric, therefore, about God's malevo- 
lence and wickedness is entirely beside the point, 
nor does it even touch the difficulty that, in his 
heart, James Mill is aiming at. His main diffi- 
culty is nothing more than this : How can an in- 
finite will that rules everywhere, find room for a 
finite will not in harmony with itself? Whilst 
the only farther perplexity that the passage indi- 
cates, is the existence of those evil conditions by 
which the finite will, already so weak and waver- 
ing, is yet farther hampered. 

Now these difficulties are doubtless quite as 



Morality and Natural Theism. 253 



great as James Mill thought they were ; but we 
must observe this, that they are not of the same 
kind. They are merely intellectual difficulties. 
They are not moral difficulties at all. Mill truly 
says that they involve a contradiction in terms. 
But why ? Not, as Mill says, because a wicked 
God is set up as the object of moral worship, bat 
because, in spite of all the wickedness existing, 
the Author of all existences is affirmed not to be 
wicked. 

Nor, again, is Mill right in saying that this 
contradiction is due to " slovenliness of thought." 
Theology accepts it with its eyes wide open, mak- 
ing no attempt to explain the inexplicable ; and 
the human will it treats in the same way. It 
makes no offer to us to clear up everything, or to 
enable thought to put a girdle round the universe. 
On the contrary, it proclaims with emphasis that 
its first axioms are unthinkable; and its most 
renowned philosophic motto is, " I believe because 
it is impossible." 

What shall it say, then, when assailed by the 
rational moralist ? It will not deny its own con- 
dition, but it will show its opponent that his is 
really the same. It will show him that, let him 
give his morality what base he will, he cannot 
conceive of things without the same contradiction 
in terms. If good be a thing of any spiritual 
value — if it be, in other words, what every moral 
system supposes it to be — that good can co-exibt. 



230 



Is Life Worth Living? 



with evil is just as unthinkable as that God can. 
The value of moral q-oocl is supposed to lie in this 
— that by it we are put en rapport with some- 
thing that is better than ourselves — some " stream 
of tendency/' let us say, " that makes for righteous- 
ness." But if this stream of tendency be not a 
personal God, what is it ? Is it Nature % Na- 
ture, we have seen already, is open to just the 
same objections that God is. It is equally guilty 
of all the evil that is contained in it. Is it Truth, 
then — -pure Truth, for its own sake % Again, we 
have seen already that as little can it be that. Is 
it Human Nature as opposed to Nature ? — Man 
as distinct from, and holier than, any individual 
men ? Of all the substitutes for God this at first 
sight seems the most promising, or at any rate, 
the most practical. But apart from all the o x her 
objections to this, which we have already been 
considering in such detail, it will very soon be 
apparent that it involves the very same inconsis- 
tency, the same contradiction in terms. The fact 
of moral evil still confronts us, and the humanity 
to which we lift our hearts up is still taxable with 
that. But perhaps we separate the good in hu- 
manity from the evil, and only worship the former 
as struggling to get free from the latter. This, 
however, will be of little help to us. If what we 
call humanity is nothing but the good part of it, 
we can only vindicate its goodness at the expense 
of its strength. Evil is at least an equal match 



Morality and Natural Theism. 261 



for it, and in most of the battles hitherto it is evil 
that has been victorious. But to conceive of good 
in this way is really to destroy our conception of 
it. Goodness is in itself an incomplete notion ; 
it is but one facet of a figure, which, approached 
from other sides, appears to us as eternity, as 
omnipresence, and, above all, as supreme strength; 
and to reduce goodness to nothing but the higher 
part of humanity — to make it a wavering fitful 
flame that continually sinks and flickers, that at its 
best can but blaze for a while, and at its brightest 
can throw no light beyond this paltry parish of a 
world — is to deprive it of its whole meaning and 
hold on us. Or again, even were this not so, and 
could we believe, and be strengthened by believ- 
ing that the good in humanity would one day gain 
the victor}', and that some higher future, which 
even we might partake in by preparing, was in 
store for the human race, would our conception 
of the matter then be any more harmonious ? 
As we surveyed our race as a whole, would its 
brighter future ever do away with its past ? 
Would not the depth and the darkness of the 
shadow grow more portentous as the light grew 
brighter? And would not man's history strike 
more clearly on us as the ghastly embodiment cf 
a vast injustice ? But it may be said that the 
sorrows of the past will hereafter be dead and 
and clone with; that evil will literally be as though 
it had never been. Well, and so in a short time 



262 



Is Life Worth Living? 



will the good likewise; and if we are ever to 
think lightly of the world's sinful and sorrowful 
past, we shall have to think equally lightly of its 
sinless and cheerful future. 

Let us pass now to the secondary points. Op- 
ponents of theism, or of religion in general, are 
perpetually attacking it for its theories of a future 
life. Its eternal rewards and punishments are 
to them permanent stumbling-blocks. A future 
life of happiness they think an unmeaning prom- 
ise ; and a future life of misery they think an un- 
worthy and brutal threat. And if reason and 
observation are to be our only guides, we cannot 
say that they do not argue with justice. If we 
believe in heaven, we believe in something that 
the imagination fails to grasp. If we believe in 
hell, we believe in something that our moral sense 
revolts at : for though hell may be nothing but 
the conscious loss of God, and though those that 
lose Him may have made their own hell for them- 
selves, still their loss, if eternal, will be* an eternal 
flaw and disease in the sum of things — the eter- 
nal self-assertion against omnipotence of some 
depraved and alien power. 

From these difficulties it is impossible to escape. 
All we can do here, as in the former case, is to 
show that they are not peculiar to the special 
doctrines to which they are supposed generally to 
be due ; but that they are equally inseparable 
from any of the proposed substitutes. We can only 



Morality and Natural Theism. 



263 



show that they are inevitable, not that they are 
not insoluble. If we condemn a belief in heaven 
because it is unthinkable, we must for the same 
reason, as we have seen already, condemn a 
Utopia on earth — the thing we are now told we 
should fix our hopes upon, instead of it. As to 
the second question — that of eternal punishment, 
we may certainly here get rid of one difficulty by 
adopting the doctrine of a final restitution. But, 
though one difficulty will be thus got rid of, an- 
other equally great will take its place. Our moral 
sense, it is true, will no more be shocked by the 
conception of an eternal discord in things, but we 
shall be confronted by a fatalism that will allow 
to us no moral being at all. If we shall all reach 
the same place in the end — if inevitably we shall all 
do so — it is quite plain that our freedom to choose 
in the matter is a freedom that is apparent only. 
Mr. Leslie Stephen, it seems, sees this clearly 
enough. Once give morality its spiritual and super- 
natural meaning, and there is, he holds, "some 
underlying logical necessity which binds [a belief 
in hell] indissolubly with the primary articles 
of the faith." Such a system of retribution, he 
adds, is "created spontaneously" by the "con- 
science." "Heaven and hell are corollaries that 
rise and fall together. . . . Whatever the 
meaning of <uoWos, the fearful emotion which is 
symbolised, is eternal or independent of time, by 
the same right as the ecstatic emotion." He sees 



264 



Is Life Worth Living? 



this clearly enough ; but the strange thing is that 
he does not see the converse. He sees that the 
Christian conception of morality necessitates the 
affirmation of hell. He does not see that the de- 
nial of hell is the denial of Christian morality, 
and that in calling the former a dream, as he does, 
he does not call the latter a dream likewise. 

We can close our eyes to none of these per- 
plexities. The only way to resist their power is 
not to ignore them, but to realise to the full their 
magnitude, and to see how, if we let them take 
away from us anything, they will in another mo- 
ment take everything ; to see that we must either 
set our foot upon their necks, or that they will 
set their feet on ours ; to see that we can look 
them down, but that we can never look them 
through ; to see that we can make them impotent 
if we will, but that if they are not impotent they 
will be omnipotent. 

But the strongest example of this is yet to 
come : and this is not any special belief either as 
to religion or morals, but a belief underlying both 
of these, and without which neither of them were 
possible. It is a belief which from one point of 
view~ we have already touched upon — the belief 
in the freedom of the will. But Ave have as yet 
only considered it in relation to physical science. 
What we have now to do is to consider it in re- 
lation to itself. 

What, then, let us ask, is the nature of the be- 



Morality and Natural Theism. 



265 



lief? To a certain extent the answer is very easy. 
When we speak and think of free-will ordinarily, 
we know quite well what we mean by it; and we 
one and all of us mean exactly the same thing. 
It is true that when professors speak upon this 
question, they make countless efforts to distin- 
guish between the meaning which they attach to 
the belief, and the meaning which the world at- 
taches to it. And it is possible that in their 
studies or their lecture-rooms they may contrive 
for the time being to distort or to confuse for them- 
selves the common view of the matter. But let 
the professor once forget his theories, and be 
forced to buffet against his life's importunate and 
stem realities : let him quarrel with his house- 
keeper because she has mislaid his spectacles, or 
his night-cap, or, preoccupied with her bible, lias 
not mixed his gruel properly ; and his conception 
of free-will will revert in an instant to the univer- 
sal type, and the good woman will discern only 
too plainly t at her master's convictions as to it 
are precisely the same things as her own. Every- 
where, indeed, m all the life that surrounds us — ■ 
in the social and moral judgments on which the 
fabric of society has reared itself, in the personal 
judgments on which so much depends in friend- 
ship and antipathies—everywhere, in conduct, in 
emotion, in art, in language, and in law, we see 
man's common belief in will written, broad, and 
plain,, and clear. There is, perhaps, no belief to 



266 



Is Life Worth Living? 



which, for practical purposes, he attaches so im- 
portant and so plain a meaning. 

Such is free-will when looked at from a dis- 
tance. But let us look at it more closely, and see 
what happens then. The result is strange. Like 
a path seen at dusk across a moorland, plain and 
visible from a distince, but fading gradually from 
us the more near we draw to it, so does the be- 
lief in free-will fade before the near inspection of 
reason. It at first grows hazy ; at last it becomes 
indistinguishable. At first we begin to be un- 
certain of what we mean by it ; at last we find 
ourselves certain that so far as we trust to reason, 
we cannot possibly have any meaning at all. 
Examined in this way, every act of our lives — all 
our choices and refusals, seem nothing but the 
necessary outcome of things that have gone be- 
fore. It is true that between some actions the 
choice hangs at times so evenly, that our will may 
seem the one thing that at last turns the balance. 
But let us analyse the matter a little more care- 
fully, and we shall see that there are a thousand 
microscopic motives, too small for us to be entirely 
conscious of, which, according to how they settle 
€n us, will really decide the question. Nor shall 
we see only that this is so. Let us go a little fur- 
ther, and reason will tell us that it must be so. 
Were this not the case, there would have been an 
escape left for us. Though admitting that what 
controlled our actions could be nothing but the 



Morality and Natural Theism. 267 



strongest motive, it might yet be contended that 
the will could intensify any motive it chose, and 
that thus motives really were only tools in its 
hands. But this does but postpone the difficulty, 
not solve it. What is this free-will when it comes 
to use its tools ? It is a something, we shall find, 
that our minds cannot give harbor to. It is a 
thing contrary to every analogy of nature. It is 
a thing which is forever causing, but which is in 
itself uncaused. 

To escape h orn this difficulty is altogether hope- 
less. Age after age has tried to do so, but tried 
in vain. There have been always metaphysical 
experts ready to engage to make free-will a some- 
thing intellectually conceivable. But they all 
either leave the question where they found it, or 
else they only seem to explain it, by denying cov- 
ertly the fact that really wants explaining. 

Such is free-will when examined by the natural 
reason — a thing that melts away inevitably first 
to haze, and then to utter nothingness. And for 
a time we feel convinced that it really is nothing. 
Let us, however, again retire from it to the com- 
mon distance, and the phantom we thought exor- 
cised is again back in an instant. There is the 
sphinx once more, distinct and clear as ever, hold- 
ing in its hand the scales of good and evil, and 
demanding a curse or a blessing for every human 
action. We are once more certain — more certain 
of this than anything — that we are, as we always 



263 



Is Life Worth Living? 



thought we were, free agents, free to choose, and 
free to refuse ; and that in virtue of this freedom, 
and in virtue of this alone, we are responsible for 
what we do and are. 

Let us consider this point well. Let us con- 
sider first how free-will is a moral necessity ; next 
how it is an intellectual impossibility ; and lastly 
how, though it be impossible, we yet, in defiance 
of intellect, continue, as moral beings, to believe 
in it Let us but once realise that we do this, 
that all mankind universally do this and have 
done — and the difficulties offered us by theism 
will no longer stagger us. We shall be prepared 
for them, prepared not to drive them away, but 
to endure their presence. If in spite of my reason 
I can believe that my will is free, in spite of my 
reason I can believe that God is good. The lat- 
ter belief is not nearly so hard as the former. 
The greatest stumbling-block in the moral world 
lies in the threshold by which to enter it. 

Such then are the moral difficulties, properly 
so called, that beset theism ; but there are certain 
others of a vaguer nature, that we must glance at 
likewise. It is somewhat hard to know how to 
classify these ; but it will be correct enough to 
say that whereas those we have just dealt with 
appeal to the moral intellect, the ones we are to 
deal with now appeal to the moral imagination. 
The facts that these depend on, and which are 
practically new discoveries for the modern world, 



Morality and Natural Theism. 269 



are the insignificance of the earth, when com- 
pared with the universe, of which it is visibly 
and demonstrably an integral but insignificant 
fragment; the enormous period of his existence for 
which man has had no religious history, and has 
been, so far as we can tell, not a religious being 
at all ; and the vast majority of the race that are 
still stagnant and semi-barbarous, Is it possible, 
we ask, that a God, with so many stars to attend 
to, should busy himself with this paltry earth, 
and make it the scene of events more stupendous 
than the courses of countless systems ? Is it 
possible that of the swarms, vicious and aimless, 
that breed upon it, each individual — Bushman, 
Chinaman, or Negro — is a precious immortal 
being, with a birthright in infinity and eternity ? 
The effect of these considerations is sometimes 
overwhelming. Astronomy oppresses us with the 
gulfs of space ; geology with the gulfs of time 
history and travel with a babel of vain existence. 
And here, as in, the former case, our perplexities 
cannot be explained away. We can only meet 
them by seeing that if they have any power at all, 
they are all-powerful, and that they will not des- 
troy religion only, but the entire moral conception 
of man also. Religious belief, and moral belief 
likewise, involve both of them some vast mystery; 
and reason can do nothing but focalise, not solvi> 
it. 

All, then, that I am trying to make evident 



270 



Is Life Worth Living? 



this — and this must be sufficient for us — not that 
theism, with its attendant doctrines, presents us 
with no difficulties, necessitates no baffling con- 
tradictions in terms, and confronts us with no 
terrible and piteous spectacles, but that all this is 
not peculiar to theism. It is not the price we pay 
for rising from morality to religion. It is the 
price we pay for rising from the natural to the 
supernatural Once double the sum of things by 
adding this second world to it, and it swells to 
such a size that our reason can no longer encircle 
it. We are torn this way and that by convictions, 
each of which is equally necessary, but each of 
which excludes the others. When we try to grasp 
them all at once, our mind is like a man tied to 
wild horses ; or like Phaeton in the Sun's chariot, 
bewildered and powerless over the intractable 
and the terrible team. We can only recover our 
strength by a full confession of our weakness. 
We can only lay hold on the beliefs that we see 
to be nc Till, by asking faith to join hands with 
reason. If we refuse to do this, there is but one 
alternative. Without faith we can perhaps ex- 
plain things if we will ; but we must first make 
them not worth explaining. We can only think 
them out -entirely by regarding them as some- 
thing not worth thinking out at all. 



The Human Race and Revelation. 271 



CHAPTER XL 

THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 

** The scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious tri- 
umph of the infidel, shoidd cease as soon as they recollect not only 
by whom, but likewise to whom, the Divine Revelation was given" 
— Gibbon.* 

AND now let us suppose ourselves convinced, 
at least for the sake of argument, that man 
will always believe in himself as a moral being, 
and that he will, under no compulsion, let this 
belief go. Granting this, from what we have just 
seen, thus much will be plain to us, that theism* 
should it ever tend to re-assert itself, can have no 
check to fear at the hands of positive thought. 
Let us, therefore, suppose further, that such a 
revival of faith is imminent, and that the enlight- 
ened world, with its eyes wide open, is about to 
turn once again to religious desires and aims. 
This brings us face to face with the second ques- 
tion, that we have not as yet touched upon : will 
the religion thus turned to be a natural religion 
only, or is it possible that some exclusive dogma- 
tism may be recognised as a supernatural re-state- 
ment of it ? 

* It is curious to reflect that what Gibbon said as a sarcasm, is really a 
serious and profound truth, and leads to conclusions exactly opposite to those 
drawn from it in that witty and most fascinating chapter from which the 
above words are quoted. 



272 



Is Life Worth Living f 



Before cjoinq; further with this Question it vail 
be well to say a few words as to the exact position 
it occupies. This, with regard to the needs of 
man, is somewhat different to the position of 
natural theism. That a natural theism is essen- 
tial to man's moral being is a proposition that can 
be more or less rigidly demonstrated ; but that a 
revelation is essential as a supplement to natural 
theism can be impressed upon us only in a much 
looser way. Indeed, many men who believe most 
firmly that without religion human life will be 
dead, rest their hopes for the future not on the 
revival and triumph of any one alleged revelation, 
but on the oradual evanescence of the special 
claims of all. Nor can we find any sharp and 
defined line of argument to convince them that 
they are wrong. The objections, however, to 
which this position is open are, I think, none the 
less cogent because they are somewhat general ; 
and to all practical men, conversant with life and 
history, it must be plain that the necessity of 
doing God's will being granted, it is a most anxi- 
ous and earnest question whether that will has 
not been in some special and articulate way re- 
vealed to us. 

Take the mass of religious humanity, and giving 
it a natural creed, it will be found that instinc- 
tively and inevitably it asks for more. Such a 
creed by itself has excited more longings than it 
has satisfied,, and raised more perplexities than it 



The Raman Race and Revelation. 273 



lias set at rest. It is true that it has supplied 
men with a sufficient analysis of the worth they 
attach to life, and of the momentous issues atten- 
dant on the way in which they live it. But when 
they come practically to choose their way, they 
&nd that such religion is of little help to them. 
It never puts out a hand to lift or lead them. It 
is an alluring voice, heard far off through a fcg, 
and calling to them, " Follow me !" but it leaves 
them in the fog to pick their own way out towards 
it, over rocks and streams and pitfalls, which they 
can but half distinguish, and amongst which they 
nay be either killed or crippled, and are almost 
certain to grow bewildered. And even should 
there be a small minority, who feel that this is 
not true of themselves, they can hardly help feel- 
ing that it is true of the world in general. A 
purely natural theism, with no organs of human 
speech, and with no machinery for making its 
spirit articulate, never has ruled men, and, so far 
as we can see, never possibly can rule them. The 
choices which our life consists of are definite 
things. The rule which is to guide our choices 
must be something definite also. And here it is 
that natural theism fails. It may supply us with 
the major premiss, but it is vague and uncertain 
about the minor. It can tell us with sufficient 
emphasis that all vice is to be avoided ; it is con- 
tinually at a loss to tell us whether this thing or 
whether that thing is vicious. Indeed, this prac- 

17 



274 



Is Life Worth Living? 



tical insufficiency of natural theism is borne wit- 
ness to by the very existence of all alleged revela- 
tions. For, if none of these be really the special 
word of God, a belief in them is all the more a 
sign of a general need in man. If none of then: 
represent the actual attainment of help, they aL 
of them embody the passionate and persistent cry 
for it. 

We shall understand this more clearly if we 
consider one of the first characteristics that a 
revelation necessarily claims, and the results thai 
are at this moment, in a certain prominent case, 
attending on a denial of it. The characteristic I 
speak of is an absolute infallibility. Any super- 
natural religion that renounces its claim to this, 
it is clear can profess to be a semi-revelation only. 
It is a hybrid thing, partly natural and partly 
supernatural, and it thus practically has all the 
qualities of a religion that is wholly natural. In 
so far as it professes to be revealed, it of course 
professes to be infallible ; but if the revealed part 
be in the first place hard to distinguish, and in 
the second place hard to understand — if it may 
mean many things, and many of those things con- 
tradictory — it might just as well have been never 
made at all. To make it in any sense an infal- 
lible revelation, or in other words a revelation at 
all, to us, we need a power to interpret the testa- 
ment that shall have equal authority with that 
testament itself. 



The Human Race and Revelation. 275 



Simple as this truth seems, mankind have been 
a long time in learning it. Indeed, it is only in 
the present day that its practical meaning has 
come generally to be recognised. But now at 
this moment upon all sides of us, history is teach- 
ing it to us by an example, so clearly that wo can 
no longer mistake it. 

That example is Protestant Christianity, and 
the condition to which, after three centuries, it is 
now visibly bringing itself. It is at last beginning 
to exhibit to us the true result of the denial of 
infallibility to a religion that professes to be super- 
natural. We are at last beginning to see in it 
neither the purifier of a corrupted revelation, nor 
the corrupter of a pure revelation, but the prac- 
tical denier of all revelation whatsoever. It is 
fast evaporating into a mere natural theism, and 
Is thus showing us what, as a governing power, 
natural theism is. Let us look at England, 
Europe, and America, and consider the condition 
of the entire Protestant world. Eeligion, it is 
true, we shall still rind in it; but it is religion 
from which not only the supernatural element is 
disappearing, but in which the natural element is 
fast becoming nebulous. It is indeed growing, as 
Mr. Leslie Stephen says it is, into ? religion of 
dreams. All its doctrines are growing vague as 
dreams, and like dreams their outlines are for 
ever changing. Mr. Stephen has pitched on a 
•very happy illustration of this. A distinguished 



270 



Is Life Wovtli Living? 



clergyman of the English Church, he reminds us, 
has preached and published a set of sermons/" 
in which he denies emphatically any belief in 
eternal punishment, although admitting at the 
same time that the opinion of the Christian world 
is against him. These sermons gave rise to a 
discussion in one of the leading monthly reviews, 
to which Protestant divines of all shades of opin- 
ion contributed their various arguments. "It is 
barely possible/' says Mr. Stephen, "with the 
best intentions, to take such a discussion seriously. 
Boswell tells us how a lady interrogated Dr. 
Johnson as to the nature of the spiritual body. 
She seemed desirous, he adds, of ' knowing more ; 
but he left the subject in obscurity.' "We smile 
at Boswell's evident impression that Johnson 
could, if he had chosen, have dispelled the dark- 
ness. When we find a number of educated q-en- 
tlemen seriously inquiring as to the conditions o: 
existence in the next world, we feel that they are 
sharing Boswell's naivete without his excuse. 
What can any human being outside a pulpit say 
upon such a subject which does not amount to a 
confession of his own ignorance, coupled, it may 
be, with more or less suggestion of shadowy hopes 
and fears ? Have the secrets of the prison-house 
really been revealed to Canon Farrar or Mr. 
Beresford Hope ? . . . When men search into 
the unknowable, they naturally arrive at very 

* 44 Our Eternal Hope." By Canon ifarrar. 



The Human Race and Revelation. 277 



different results." And Mr. Stephen argues with 
perfect justice that if we are to judge Christianity 
from such discussions as these, its doctrines of a 
future life are all visibly receding into a vague 
"dream-land;" and we shall be quite ready to 
admit, as he says, in words I have already quoted, 
'** that the impertinent young curate who tells [him 
he] will be burnt everlastingly for not sharing such 
superstitions, is just as ignorant as [Mr. Stephen 
himself], and that [Mr. Stephen] knows as much 
as [his] dog." 

The critic, in the foregoing passages, draws his 
conclusion from the condition of but one Protest- 
ant doctrine. But he might draw the same con- 
clusion from all ; for the condition of all of them 
is the same. The divinity of Christ, the nature 
of his atonement, the constitution of the Trinity, 
the efficacy of the sacraments, the inspiration of 
the Bible — there is not one of these points on 
which the doctrines, once so fiercely fought for, 
are not now, among the Protestants, getting as 
vague and varying, as weak and as compliant to 
the caprice of each individual thinker, as the doc- 
trine of eternal punishment. And Mr. Stephen 
and his school exaggerate nothing in the way in 
which they represent the spectacle. Protestant- 
ism, in fact, is at last becoming explicitly what it 
always was implicitly, not a supernatural religion 
which fulfils the natural, but a natural religion 
which denies the supernatural. 



278 



Is Life Worth Living? 



And what, as a natural religion, is its working 
power in the world ? Much of its earlier influence 
doubtless still survives ; but that is a survival 
only of what is passing, and we must not judge it 
by that. We must judge it by what it is growing 
into, not by what it is growing out of. And j udged 
in this way, its practical power — its moral, its 
teaching, its guiding power— is fast growing as 
weak and as uncertain as its theology. As long 
as its traditional moral system is in accordance 
with what men, on other grounds, approve of, it 
may serve to express the general tendency im- 
pressively, and to invest it with the sanction of 
many reverend associations. But let the general 
tendency once begin to conflict with it, and its 
inherent weakness in 'an instant becomes ap- 
parent. We may see this by considering the 
moral character of Christ, and the sort of weight 
that is claimed for his example. This example, 
so the Christian world teaches, is faultless and 
infallible; and as long as we believe this, the 
example has supreme authority. But apply to 
this the true Protestant method, and the authority 
soon shows signs of wavering. Let us once deny 
that Christ was more than a faultless man, and 
we lose by that denial our authority for asserting 
that he was as much as a faultless man. Even 
should it so happen that we do approve entirely 
of his conduct, it is we who are approving of him, 
not he who is anprovim* 01 us. The old position 



The Human Race and Revelation. 279 



is reversed : we become the patrons of our most 
worthy Judge eternal ; and the moral infallibility 
is tranferred from him to ourselves. In othei 
words, the practical Protestant formula can be 
nothing more than this. The Protestant teacher 
says to us, " Such a way of life is the best, take 
my word for it : and if you want an example gc 
to that excellent Son of David, who take my word 
for it, was the very best of men." But even in 
this case the question arises, how shall the Pro- 
testants interpret the character that they praise \ 
And to this they can never give any satisfactory 
answer. What really happens with them is in 
evitable and obvious. The character is simply 
for them a symbol of what each happens to thin!; 
most admirable ; and the identity in all cases cl 
its historical details does not produce an identity 
as of a single portrait, but an identity as of one 
frame applied to many. Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
for instance, sees in Jesus one sort of man, Father 
Newman another, Charles Kingsley another, and 
M. Eenan another ; and the Imiiatio Christi, as 
understood by these, will be found in each case 
to mean a very different thing. The difference 
between these men, however, will seem almost 
unanimity, if we compare them with others who, 
so far as logic and authority go, have just as good 
a claim on our attention. There is hardly any 
conceivable aberration of moral license that has 
not, in some quarter or other, embodied itself 



•280 



Is Life Worth Living? 



into a rule of life, and claimed to be the proper 
outcome of Protestant Christianity. Nor is this 
true only of the wilder and more eccentric sects. 
It is true of graver and more weighty thinkers 
also; so much so, that a theological school in 
Germany has maintained boldly " that fornication 
is blameless, and that it is not interdicted by the 
precepts of the Gospel."* 

The matter, however, does not end thus. The 
men I have just mentioned agree, all of them, 
that Christ's moral example was perfect ; and 
their only disagreement has been as to what that 
example was. But the Protestant logic will by 
no means leave us here. That alleged perfection, 
if we ourselves are to be the judges of it, is sure, 
by and by, to exhibit to us traces of imperfection. 
And this is exactly the thing that has already 
beqim to happen. A generation a^o one of the 
highest-minded and most logical ot our English 
Protestants, Professor Francis Newman, declared 
that in Christ's character there were certain moral 
clehciences ;t and the last blow to the moral 
authority of Protestantism was struck by one of 
its own household. It is true that Professor 
Newman's censures were small and were not ir- 
reverent. But if these could come from a man 
of his intense piety, what will and what do come 
from other quarters may be readily conjectured. 

^See Dollinger's 4 4 Continuation of Hortig's Church History," quoted by 
Mr. J. B. Robertson, in his "Memoir of Di\ Moehler. 
tSee "Phases of my Faith," by Francis .Newman. 



The Hitman Race and Revelation. 281 



Indeed, the fact is daily growing more and more 
evident, that for the world that still calls itself 
Protestant, the autocracy of Christ's moral ex- 
ample is gone ; and its nominal retention of power 
only makes its real loss of it the more visible. It 
merely reflects and focalises the uncertainty that 
men are again feeling — the uncertainty and the 
sad bewilderment. The words and the counten- 
ance, once so sure and steadfast, now change, as 
we look at, and listen to them, into new accents and 
aspects ; and the more earnestly we gaze and lis- 
ten, the less can we distinguish clearly what we 
hear or see. "What shall Ave do to be saved?" 
men are again crying. And the lips that were 
once oracular now merely seem to murmur back 
confusedly, "Alas ! what shall you do ?" 

Such and so helpless, even now, is natural 
theism showing itself; and in the dim and mo- 
mentous changes that are coming over things, in 
the vast fiux of opinion that is preparing, in the 
earthquake that is rocking the moral ground under 
us, overturning and engulfing the former land- 
marks, and re-opening the graves of the buried 
lusts of paganism, it will show itself very soon 
more helpless still. Its feet are on the earth only. 
The earth trembles, and it trembles : it is in the 
same case as we are. It stretches in vain its im- 
ploring hands to heaven. But the heaven takes 
no heed of it. No divine hand reaches clown to 
it to uphold and guide it 



282 



Fs Life Worth Living? 



This must be the feeling, I believe, of most 
honest and practical men, with regard to natural 
religion, and its necessary practical inefficiency. 
Nor will the want it necessarily leaves of a moral 
rule be the only consideration that will force this 
conviction on them. The heart, as the phrase 
goes, will corroborate the evidence of the head. 
It will be felt, even more forcibly than it can be 
reasoned, that if there be indeed a Gocl who loves 
and cares for men, he must surely, or almost 
surely, have spoken in some audible and certain 
way to them. At any rate I shall not be with- 
out many who agree with me, when I say that for 
the would-be religious world it is anxious and 
earnest question whether any special and explicit 
revelation from God exist for us ; and this being 
the case, it will be not lost time if we try to deal 
fairly and dispassionately with the question. 

Before going further, however, let us call to 
mind two things. Let us remember first, that if 
we expect to find a revelation at all, it is morally 
certain that it must be a revelation already in ex- 
istence. It is hardly possible, if we consider that 
all the supernatural claims that have been made 
hitherto are false, to expect that a new manifesta- 
tion, altogether different in kind, is in store for 
the world in the future. Secondly, our inquiries 
being thus confined to religions that are already 
in existence, what we are practically concerned 
with is the truth of Christianity only. It is true 



The Human Race and Revelation. 



283 



that we have heard, on all sides, of the superiority 
of other religions to the Christian. But the men 
who hold such language, though they may affect 
to think that such religions are superior in certain 
moral points, yet never dream of claiming for 
them the miraculous and supernatural authority 
that they deny to Christianity. No man denies 
that Christ was born of a virgin, in order to make 
the same claim for Buddha : or denies the Chris- 
tian Trinity in order to affirm the Brahminic. 
There is but one alleged revelation that, as a 
revelation, the progressive nations of the world 
are concerned with, or whose supernatural claims 
are still worthy of being examined by us : and that 
religion is the Christian. These claims, it is true, 
are being fast discredited ; but still, as yet, they 
have not been silenced wholly ; and what I pro- 
pose to ask now is, what chance is there of their 
power again reviving ? 

Now considering the way in which I have just 
spoken of Protestantism, it may seem to many 
that I have dismissed this question already. With 
the " enlightened " English thinker such certainly 
will be the first impression. But there is one 
point that such thinkers all forget : Protestant 
Christianity is not the only form of it. They have 
still the form to deal with which is the oldest, the 
most legitimate, and the most coherent — the 
Church of Rome. They surely cannot forget the 
existence of this Church or her magnitude. To 



284 



Is Life Worth Living? 



suppose this would be to attribute to them too 
insular, or rather too provincial, an ignorance, 
The cause, however, certainly is ignorance, and 
an ignorance which, though less surprising, is far 
deeper. In this country the popular conception 
of Rome has been so distorted by our familiar- 
ity with Protestantism, that the true conception 
of her is something quite strange to us. Our 
divines have, exhibited her to us as though she 
\vere a lapsed Protestant sect, and they have at- 
tacked her for being false to doctrines that were 
never really hers. They have failed to see that 
the first and essential difference which separates 
her from them lies, primarily not in any special 
dogma, but in the authority on which all her 
dogmas rest. Protestants basing their religion 
on the Bible solely, hav^ reived that Catholics 
of course profess to do so likewise ; and have 
covered them with invective for being traitors to 
their supposed profession. Rut the Church's 
primary doctrine is her own perpetual infallibility. 
She is inspired, she declares, by the same Spirit 
that inspired the Bible ; and her voice is, equally 
with the Bible, the voice of God. This theory, 
however, upon which really her whole fabric rests, 
popular Protestantism either ignores altogether, 
or treats it as if it were a modern superstition, 
which, so fax from being essential to the Church's 
system, is, on the contrary, inconsistent with it. 
Looked at in this way, Rome to the Protestant's 



The Human Race and Revelation. 285 



mind has seemed naturally to be a mass of super- 
stitions and dishonesties ; and it is this view of 
her that, strangely enough, our modern advanced 
thinkers have accepted without question. Though 
they have trusted the Protestants in nothing else, 
they have trusted them here. They have taken 
the Protestants' word for it, that Protestantism 
is more reasonable than Romanism ; and they 
think, therefore, that if they have destroyed the 
former, a fortiori have they destroyed the latter."'" 
No conception of the matter, however, could be 
more false than this. To whatever criticism the 
Catholic position may be open, it is certainly not 
thus included in Protestantism, nor is it reached 
through it. Let us try and consider the matter a 
little more truly. Let us grant all that hostile- 
criticism can say against Protestantism as a super- 
natural religion : in other words, let us set it aside 
altogether. Let us suppose no -Inns' to start with, 
in the world but a natural moral sense, and a 

* It is difficult on any other supposition to account for the marked fact 
that hardly any of our English rationalists have criticised Christianity, ex- 
cept as presented to them in a form essential ly Protestant ; and that a large- 
proportion of their criticisms are solely applicable to this. It is amusing, 
too, to observe how, to men of often such really wide minds, all theologi- 
cal authority is represented by the various social types of contemporary 
Anglican or dissenting dignitaries. Men such as Professors Huxley and 
Clifford, Mr. Leslie Stephen, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, can find no repre- 
sentatives of dogmatism but in bishops, deans, curates, Presbyterian minis- 
ters — arid, above all, curates. The one mouth-piece of the Ecdesia docens 
is for them the parish pulpit; and the more ignorant be its occunant the- 
more representative do they think his utterances. Whilst ?d.r. Matthew 
Arnold apparently thinks the whole cause of revealed religion stands and 
falls with the vagaries of the present Bisiiop oi Gluuce^ser. 



286 



Is Life Worth Living? 



simple natural theism ; and let us then see the 
relation of the Church of Eome to that. Ap- 
proached in this way, the religious world will ap- 
pear to us as a body of natural theists, all agreeing 
that they must do God's will, but differing widely 
amongst themselves as to what His will and His 
nature are. Their moral and religious views will 
be equally vague and dreamlike — more dreamlike 
even than those of the Protestant world at pres- 
ent. Their theories as to the future will be but 
/'shadowy hopes and fears." Their practice, in 
the present, will vary from asceticism to the 
widest license. And yet, in spite of all this con- 
fusion and difference, there will be amongst them 
a vague tendency to unanimity. Each man will be 
dreaming his own spiritual dream, and the dreams 
of all will be different. All their dreams, it will be 
plain, cannot represent reality ; and yet the belief 
will be common to all that some common reality 
is represented by them. Men, therefore, will begin 
to compare their dreams together, and try to draw 
out of them the common element, so that the 
dream may come slowly to be the same for all ; 
that, if it grows, it may grow by some recognis- 
able laws ; that it may, in other words, lose its 
character of a dream, and assume that of a reality. 
We suppose, therefore, that our natural theists 
form themselves into a kind of parliament, in 
which they may compare, adjust, and give shape 
to the ideas that were before so wavering, and 



The Human Race and Revelation. 



287 



which shall contain some machinery for formulat- 
ing such agreements as may be come to. The 
common religious sense of the world is thus or- 
ganised, and its conclusions registered. We have 
no longer the wavering dreams of men : we have 
instead of them the constant vision of man. 

Now in such a universal parliament we see 
v, hat the Church of Borne essentially is, viewed 
r rom her natural side. She is ideally, if not 
actually, the parliament of the believing world. 
Her doctrines, as she one by one unfolds them, 
emerge upon us like petals from a half-closed bud, 
They are not added arbitrarily from without , 
ihey are developed from within. They are the 
lowers contained from the first in the bud of our 
ioral consciousness. When she formulates in 
diese days something that has not been formu- 
lated before, she is no more enunciating a new 
:ruth than was Newton when he enunciated the 
:Iieory of gravitation. Whatever truths, hitherto 
jidden, she may in the course of time grow con- 
scious of, she holds that these were always implied 
ui her teaching, though before she did not know 
\i ; just as gravitation was implied in many ascer- 
tained facts that men knew well enough lonsr 
before they knew that it was implied in them. 
Thus far, then, the Church of Rome essentially is 
the spiritual sense of humanity, speaking to men 
through its proper and only possible organ. Its 
intricate machinery, such as its systems of repre- 



2S8 



Is Life Worth Living? 



sentation, its methods of voting the appointment 
of its speaker, and the legal formalities required 
in the recording of its decrees, are things acciden- 
tal only ; or if they are necessary, they are neces- 
sary only in a secondary way. 

But the picture of the Church thus far is only 
half drawn. She is all this, but she is something 
more than this. She is net only the parliament 
of spiritual man, but she is such a parliament 
guided by the Spirit of Cod. The work of that 
Spirit may be secret, and to the natural eyes un- 
traceable, as the work of the human will is in the 
human brain. But none the less it is there. 

" Totam infusa per artus 
Mens ajitat molein, ct ma^no ce corpore miscet. w 

The analogy of the human brain is here of great 
help to us. The human brain is an arrangement 
of material particles which can become connected 
with consciousness only in virtue of such a special 
arrangement. The Church is theoretically an ar- 
rangement of individuals which can become con- 
nected with the Spirit of God only in virtue of an 
arrangement equally special. 

If this be a true picture of the Catholic Church, 
and the place which the only revelation we are 
concerned with ideally holds in the world, there 
can be no a priori difficulty in the passage from 
a natural religion to such a supernatural one. 
The difficulties begin when we compare the ideal 



The Human Race and Revelation. 289 



picture with the actual facts ; and it is true, when 
we do this, that they at once confront us with a 
strength that seems altogether disheartening. 
These difficulties are of two distinct kinds : some, 
as in the case of natural theism, are moral; others 
are historical. We will deal with the former first, 
beginning with that which is at once the pro- 
foundest and the most obvious. 

The Church, as has been said already, is ideally 
the parliament of the whole believing world ; but 
we find, as a matter of fact, that she is the parlia- 
ment of a small part only. Now what shall we 
say to this ? If God would have all men do His 
will, why should He place the knowledge of it 
within reach of such a small minority of them? 
And to this question we can give no answer. It 
is a mystery, and we must acknowledge frankly 
that it is one. But there is this to say yet — that 
it is not a new mystery. We already suppose 
ourselves to have accepted it in a simpler form : 
in the form of the presence of evil, and the partial 
prevalence of good. By acknowledging the claim 
of the special revelation in question, we are not 
adding to the complexity of that old-world prob- 
lem. I am aware, however, that many think 
just the reverse of this. I will therefore dwell 
upon the subject for a few moments longer. To 
many who can accept the difficulty of the partial 
presence of good, the difficulty seems wantonly 
aggravated by the claims of a special revelation, 

18 



290 



Is Life Worth Living ? 



These claims seem to them to do two things. In 
the first place, they are thought to make the pre- 
sence of good even more partial than it otherwise 
would be ; and secondly — which is a still greater 
stumbling-block — to oblige us to condemn as evil 
much that would else seem good of the purest 
kind. There are many men, as we must all know, 
without the Church, who are doing their best to 
fight their way to God; and orthodoxy is sup- 
posed to pass a cruel condemnation on these, be- 
cause they have not assented to some obscure 
theory, their rejection or ignorance of which has 
plainly stained neither their lives nor hearts. 
And of orthodoxy under certain forms this is no 
doubt true ; but it is not true of the orthodoxy of 
Catholicism. There is no point, probably, con- 
nected with this question, about which the general 
world is so misinformed and ignorant, as the sober 
but boundless charity of what it cr Us the anathe- 
matising Church. So little indeed is this charity 
understood generally, that to assert it seems a 
startling paradox. Most paradoxes are doubtless 
in reality the lies they at first sight seem to be ; 
but not so this one. It is the simple statement 
of a fact. Never was there a religious body, ex- 
cept the Roman, that laid the intense stress she 
does on all her dogmatic teachings, and had yet 
the justice that comes of sympathy for those that 
cannot receive them. She condemns no goodness, 
•sha condemns even no earnest worship though it 



Morality and Natural Theism. 



291 



be outside her pale. On the contrary, she de- 
clares explicitly that a knowledge of "the one 
true God, our Creator and Lord/' may be attained 
to by the " natural light of human reason/' mean- 
ing by " reason" faith unenlightened by revelation; 
and she declares those to be anathema who deny 
this. The holy and humble men of heart who do 
not know her, or who in good faith reject her, 
she commits with confidence to God's uncoven- 
anted mercies ; and these she knows are infinite ; 
but, except as revealed to her, she can of necessity 
say nothing distinct about them. It is admitted 
by the world at large, that of her supposed bigotry 
she has no bitterer or more extreme exponents 
than the Jesuits ; and this is what a Jesuit theo- 
logian says upon this matter : " A heretic, so long 
as he believes his sect to be more or equally de- 
serving of belief, has no obligation to believe 
the Church . . . [and] when men who have been 
brought up in heresy, are persuaded from boyhood 
that we impugn and attack the word of God, that 
we are idolaters, pestilent deceivers, and are there- 
fore to be shunned as pestilence, they cannot, 
while this persuasion lasts, with a safe conscience 
hear us. " * Thus for those without her the Church 
has one condemnation only. Her anathemas are 
on none but those who reject her with their eyes 
open, by tampering with a conviction that she 



* Busenbaum, quoted by Dr. J H. Newman, "Letter to the Duke of 
Norfolk, " p. 65. 



292 Is Life Worth Living? 



really is the truth. These are condemned, not for 
not seeing that the teacher is true, but because 
having really seen this, they continue to close 
their eyes to it. They will not obey when they 
know they ought to obey. And thus the moral 
offence of a Catholic in denying some recondite 
doctrine, does not lie merely, and need not lie at 
all, in the immediate bad effects that such a denial 
would necessitate ; but in the disobedience, the 
self-will, and the rebellion that must in such a 
case be both a cause and a result of it. 

In the light of these considerations, though the 
old perplexity of evil will still confront us, it will 
be seen that the claims of Catholic orthodoxy do 
nothing at all to add to it. If orthodoxy, how- 
ever, admit so much good without itself, we may 
perhaps be inclined to ask what special good it 
claims within itself, and what possible motives can 
exist for either understanding or teaching it. But 
we might ask with exactly equal force, what is the 
good of true physical science, and why should we 
try to impress on the world its teachings ? Such 
a question, we can at once see, is absurd. Because 
a large number of men know nothing of physical 
science, and are apparently not the worse for 
their ignorance, we do not for that reason think 
physical science worthless. We believe, on the 
whole, that a knowledge of the laws of matter, 
including those of our organisms and their envir- 
onments, will steadily tend to better our lives, in 



The Human Race and Revelation. 



^93 



so far as they are material. It will tend, for in- 
stance, to a better preservation of our health. 
But we do not for this reason deny that many 
individuals may preserve their health who are but 
very partially acquainted with the laws of it. Nor 
do we deny the value of a thorough study of as- 
tronomy and meteorology because a certain prac- 
tical knowledge of the weather and of navigation 
may be attained without it, On the contrary, we 
hold that the fullest knowledge we can acquire 
on such matters it is our duty to acquire, and not 
acquire only, but as far as possible promulgate. 
It is true that the mass of men may never master 
such knowledge thoroughly , but what they do 
master ol it we feel convinced should be the truth, 
and even what they do not, will, we feel convinced, 
be some indirect profit to them. And the case of 
spiritual science is entirely analogous to the case 
of natural science. A man to whom the truth is 
open is not excused from rinding it because he 
knows it is not so open to all. A heretic who 
denies the dogmas of the Church has his counter- 
part in the quack who denies the verified conclu- 
sions ol science. The moral condemnation that 
is given to the one is illustrated by the intellec- 
tual condemnation that is given to the other. 

It we will think this over carefully, we shall get 
a clearer view of the moral value claimed for itself 
by orthodoxy. Some of its doctrines, the great 
and picturabl® parts of them, that appeal to all, 



294 



Is Life Worth Living? 



and that in some degree can be taken in by all, 
it declares doubtless to be saving, in their own 
nature. But for the mass of men the case is 
quite different with the facts underlying these. 
That we eat Christ's body in the Eucharist is a 
belief that, in a practical way, can be understood 
perfectly by anyone ; but the philosophy that is 
involved in this belief would be to most men the 
merest gibberish. Yet it is no more unimportant 
that those who do understand this philosophy, 
should do so truly and transmit it faithfully, than 
it is unimportant that a physician should under- 
stand the action of alcohol, because anyone inde- 
pendent of such knowledge can tell that so many 
glasses of wine will have such and such an effect 
on him. Theology is to the spiritual body what 
anatomy and medicine are to the natural body. 
The parts they each play in our lives are analog- 
ous, and in their respective worlds their raison 
d'etre is the same. What then can be shallower 
than the rhetoric of such thinkers as Mr. Carlyle, 
in which natural religion and orthodoxy are held 
up to us as contrasts and as opposites, the former 
being praised as simple and going straight to the 
heart, and the latter described and declaimed 
against as the very reverse of this ? " On the 
one hand," it is said, " see the soul going straight 
to its God, feeling His love, and content that 
others should feel it. On the other hand, see this 
pure and free communion, distracted and inter- 



The Human Race and Revelation. 



295 



rupted by a thousand tortuous reasonings as to 
the exact nature of it. What can obscure intel- 
lectual propositions/' it is asked, "have to do 
with a religion of the heart ? And do not they 
check the latter by being thus bound up with it ?" 
But what reedly can be more misleading than this % 
Natural religion is doubtless simpler in one sense 
than revealed religion ; but it is only simple be- 
cause it has no authoritative science of itself. It 
is simple for the same reason that a boy's account 
of hcxving given himself a headache is simpler than 
a physician's would be. The boy says merely, " I 
ate ten tarts, and drank three bottles of ginger- 
beer." The physician, were he to explain the cat- 
astrophe, would describe a number of far more 
complex processes. The boy's account would be 
of course the simplest, and would certainly go 
more home to the general heart of boyhood ; but 
it would not for that reason be the correctest or 
the most important. And just like this will be 
the case of the divine communion, which the 
simple saint may feel, and the subtle theologian 
analyse. 

But it will be well to observe, further, that the 
simplicity of a religion can of itself be no test of the 
probable truth of it. And in the case of natural 
religion, what is called simplicity is in general 
nothing more than vagueness. If simplicity used 
in this way be a term of praise, we might praise 
a landscape as simple because it was half-drowned 



295 



Is Life Worth Living? 



in mist. As a matter of fact, however, the relig- 
ion of the Catholic Church, putting out the ques- 
tion of its theology, is a thing far simpler than 
the outside world supposes; nor is there a doc- 
trine in it without a direct moral meaning for us ; 
and not tending to have a direct effect on the 
character. 

But the outside world misjudges of all this for 
various reasons. In the first place, it can reach 
it as a rule through explanations only; and the 
explanation or the account of anything is always 
far more intricate than the apprehension of the 
thing itself. Take, lor instance, the practice oi 
the invocation of saints. This seems to many to 
complicate the whole relation oi the soul to God, 
to be introducing a number of new and unneces- 
sary go-betweens, and to make us, as "t were, 
communicate with God through a dragoman. 
But the case really is very different. Of course 
it may be contended that intercessory prayer, or 
that prayer of any kind, is an absurdity ; but for 
those who do not think this, there can be nothing 
to object to in the invocation of saints. It is 
admitted by such men that we are not wrong in 
asking the living to pray for us. Surely, there- 
fore, it is not wrong to make a like request of the 
dead. In the same way, to those who believe in 
purgatory, to pray for the dead is as natural and 
as rational as to pray foi the living. JN ext, as to 
this doctrine of purgatory itself— which has so 



The Human Race and Revelation. 297 



long been a stumbling-block to the whole Protes- 
tant world — time goes on, and the view men take 
of it is changing. It is becoming fast recognised 
on all sides that it is the only doctrine that can 
bring a belief in future rewards and punishments 
into anything like accordance with our notions of 
what is just or reasonable. So far from its being 
a superfluous superstition, it is seen to be just 
what is demanded at once by reason and moral- 
ity; and a belief in it to be not an intellectual 
assent only, but a partial harmonising of the 
whole moral ideai. And the whole Catholic reli- 
gion, if we only distinguish and apprehend it 
rightly, will present itself to us in the same light. 

But there are other reasons besides those just 
described, by which outsiders are nindered from 
arriving at sucii a right view of the matter. Not 
only does the intricacy of Catholicism described, 
blind them to the simplicity of Catholicism experi- 
enced, hut they confuse with the points of faith, 
not only the scientific accounts the theologians 
give of them, bat mere rules of discipline, and 
pious opinions also. It is supposed popularly, 
for instance, to be of Catholic faith that celibacy 
is essential to the priest nood. This as a fact, 
however, is no more a part of the Catholic faith 
than the celibacy of a college fellow is a part of 
the Thirty -nine Articles, or than the skill of an 
English naval officer depends on his not having 
his wife with mm on shipboard. Nor again, to 



298 



Is Life Worth Living? 



take another popular instance, is the headship of 
the Catholic Church connected essentially with 
Rome, any more than the English Parliament is 
essentially connected with Westminster. 

The difficulty of distinguishing things that are 
of faith, from mere pious opinions, is a more 
subtle one. From the confusion caused by it, the 
Church seems pledged to all sorts of grotesque 
stories of saints, and accounts of the place and 
aspect of heaven, of hell and purgatory, and to be 
logically bound to stand and fall by these. Thus 
Sir James Stephen happened once in the course 
of his reading to light on an opinion of Bellar- 
mine's, and certain arguments by which he sup- 
ported it, as to the place of purgatory. It is 
quite true that to us Bellarmine's opinion seems 
sufficiently ludicrous ; and Sir James Stephen 
argued that the Roman Church is ludicrous in 
just the same degree. But if he had studied the 
matter a little deeper, he would soon have drop- 
ped his argument. He would have seen that he 
was attacking, not the doctrine of the Church, 
but simply an opinion, not indeed condemned by 
her, but held avowedly without her sanction. 
Had he studied Bellarmine to a little more pur- 
pose, he would have seen that that writer ex- 
pressly states it to be a " a question where purga- 
tory is, but that the Church has defined nothing 
on this point." He would also have learned from 
the same source that it is no article of Catholic 



The Human Ram and Revelation. 299 



faith, though it was of Bellarmine's opinion, that 
there is in purgatory any material fire ; and that, 
" as to the intensity of the pains of purgatory, 
though all admit that they are greater than any- 
thing that we suffer in this life, still it is doubtful 
how this is to be explained and understood." He 
would have learned too that, according to Bona- 
ventura,, "the sufferings of purgatory are only 
severer than those of this life, inasmuch as the 
greatest suffering in purgatory is more severe than 
the greatest suffering endured in this life ; though 
there may be a degree of punishment in purga- 
tory less intense than what may sometimes be 
undergone in this world." And finally he would 
have learned — what in this connection would have 
been well worth his attention — that the duration 
of pains in purgatory is according to Bellarmine, 
" so completely uncertain, that it is rash to pre- 
tend to determine anything about it." 

Here is one instance, that will be as good as 
many, of the way in which the private opinions of 
individual Catholics, or the transitory opinions of 
particular epochs, are taken for the unalterable 
teachings of the Catholic Church herself; and it is 
no more logical to condemn the latter as false be- 
cause the former are, than it would be to say that 
all modern geography is false because geographers 
may still entertain false opinions about regions as 
to which they do not profess certainty. Mediaeval 
doctors thought that purgatory might be the 



300 



Is Life Worth Living t 



middle of the earth. Modern geographers have 
thought that there might be an open sea at the 
Xorth Pole. But that wrong conjectures have 
been hazarded in both cases, can prove in neither 
that there have been no true discoveries. The 
Church, it is undeniable, has for a long time 
lived and moved amongst countless false opinions ; 
and to the external eye they have naturally seem- 
ed a part oi her. But science moves on, and it 
is shown that she can cast them off. She has 
cast off some already ; soon doubtless she will 
cast off others , not in any petulant anger, but 
with a composed determined gentleness, as some 
new light gravely dawns upon her. 

Granting all this, howevei, there remains a yet 
subtler characteristic of the Church, which goes 
to make her a rock of offence to many ; and that 
is, the temper and the intellectual tone which she 
seems to develop in her members. But here, 
again, we must call to oui aid considerations 
similar to those we have just been dwelling on. 
We must remember that the particular tone and 
temper that offends us is not necessarily Catholi- 
cism. The temper of the Catholic world may 
change, and, as a matter of tact, does change. It 
is not the same, indeed, in any two countries, or in 
any two eras. And it may have a new and unsus- 
pected future in store for it. It may absorb ideas 
that we should consider broader, bolder, and 
more rational than any it seems to possess at 



The Human Race and Revelation. 301 



present. But if ever it does so, the Church, in 
the opinion of Catholics, will not be growing false 
to herself ; she will only, in due time, be unfold- 
ing her own spirit more fully. Thus some people 
associate Catholic conceptions of extreme sanctity 
with a neglect of personal cleanliness; and imagine 
that a clean Catholic can, according to his own 
creed, never come very near perfection. But the 
Church has never given this view her sanction ; 
she has never made it of faith that dirt is sacred ; 
she has added no ninth beatitude in favor of an 
unchanged shirt. Many of the greatest saints 
were doubtless dirty; but they were dirty not be- 
cause of the Church they belonged to, but because 
of the age they lived in. Such an expression of 
sanctity for themselves, it is probable, will be 
loathed by the saints of the future ; yet they may 
none the less reverence, for all that, the saints 
who so expressed it in the past. This is but a 
single instance ; but it may serve as a type of the 
wide circle of changes that the Church as a living 
organism, still full of vigor and power of self- 
adaptation, will be able to develop, as the world 
develops round her, and yet lose nothing of her 
supernatural samenc :s. . 

To sum up, then ; if we would obtain a true 
view of the general character of Catholicism, we 
must begin by making a clean sweep of all the 
views that, as outsiders, we have been taught to 
entertain about her. We must, in the first place. 



302 



Is Life Worth Living? 



learn to conceive of her as a living, spiritual body, 
as infallible and as authoritative now as she ever 
was, with her eyes undimmed and her strength 
not abated, continuing to grow still as she has 
continued to grow hitherto : and the growth of 
the new dogmas that she may from time to time 
enunciate, we must learn to see are, from her own 
stand-point, signs of life and not signs of corrup- 
tion. And further, when we come to look into 
her more closety, we must separate carefully the 
diverse elements we find in her — her discipline, 
her pious opinions, her theology, and her religion. 

Let honest inquirers do this to the best of their 
power, and their views will undergo an unlooked- 
for change. Other difficulties of a more circum- 
stantial kind, it is true, still remain for them ; 
and of these I shall speak presently. But putting 
these for the moment aside, and regarding the 
question under its widest aspects only — regarding 
it only in connection with the larger generalisations 
of science, and the primary postulates of man's 
spiritual existence— the theist will find in Catholi- 
cism no new difficulties. He will find in it the 
logical development of our natural moral sense, 
developed, indeed, and still developing, under a 
special and supernatural care— but essentially the 
same thing; with the same negations, the same as- 
sertions, the same positive truths, and the same im- 
penetrable mysteries; and with nothing new added 
to them, but help, and certainty, and guidance. 



History and Claims of Christian Church. 303 



CHAPTER XIL 

UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE 
CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

<c Oh the little more, and hoiv much it is, 
And the little less, and what ivorlds av:ay /" 

Robert Browning. 

AND now we come to the last objections left us, 
of those which modern thought has arrayed 
against the Christian Revelation ; and these to 
many minds are the most conclusive and over- 
whelming of all — the objections raised against it 
by a critical study of history. Hitherto we have 
been considering the Church only with reference 
to our general sense of the fitness and the rational 
probability of things. We have now to consider 
her with reference to special facts. Her claims 
and her character, as she exists at present, may 
make perhaps appeal overpoweringly to us ; but 
she cannot be judged by these. For these are 
closely bound up with a long earthly history, 
which the Church herself has written in one way, 
binding herself to stand or fall by the truth of it ; 
and this all the secular wisdom of the world seems 
to be re- writing in quite another. This subject is 
so vast and intricate that even to approach the 
details of it would require volumes, not a single 



304 



Is Life Worth Living? 



chapter. But room in a chapter may be found 
for one thing, of prior importance to any mass of 
detail ; and that is a simple statement of the prin- 
ciples — unknown to, or forgotten by external 
critics — by which all this mass of detail is to be 
interpreted. 

Let us remember first, then, to take a general 
view of the matter, that history as cited in witness 
against the Christian Revelation, divides itself 
into two main branches. The one is a critical ex- 
amination of Christianity, taken by itself — the 
authorship, and the authenticity of its sacred 
books, and the origin and growth of its doctrines. 
The other is a critical examination of Christianity 
as compared with other religions. And the re- 
sult of both these lines of study is, to those 
brought up in the old. faith, to the last degree 
startling, and in appearance at least altogether 
disastrous. Let us sum up briefly the general 
results of them ; and first of these the historical. 

We shall begin naturally with the Bible, as 
giving us the earliest historical point at which 
Christianity is assailable. What then has modern 
criticism accomplished on the Bible ? The Bibli- 
cal account of the creation it has shown to be, in 
its literal sense, an impossible fable. To passages 
thought mystical and prophetic it has assigned 
the homeliest, and often retrospective meanings. 
Everywhere at its touch w^hat seemed superna- 
tural has been humanised, and the divinity that 



History and Claims of Christian Church. 305 



hedged the records has rapidly abandoned them. 
And now looked at in the common daylight their 
whole aspect changes for us : and stories that we 
once accepted with a solemn reverence seem 
childish, ridiculous, grotesque, and not unfre- 
quently barbarous. Or if we are hftrdiy prepared 
to admit so much as this, this much at least has 
been established firmly — that the Bible, if it does 
not give the lie itself to the astonishing claims 
that have been made for it, contains nothing in 
itself, at any rate, that can of itself be sufficient 
to support them. This applies to the New Testa- 
int;iit iust as much as to the Old ; and the conse- 
quences here are even more momentous. Weighed 
as mere human testimony, Mie value of the Gos- 
pels becomes doubtful o v insignificant. For the 
miracles of Christ, and for his superhuman nature, 
they contain little evidence, that even tends to be 
satisfactory; and even his daily words and actions 
it seems probable may have been inaccurately re- 
ported, in some cases perhaps invented, and in 
others perhaps supplied by a deceiving memory. 
When we pass from the Gospels to the Epistles, 
a kindred sight presents itself. We discern in 
them the writings of men not inspired from above; 
but, with many disagreements amongst them- 
selves, struggling upwards from below, influenced 
by a variety of existing views, and doubtful which 
of them to assimilate. We discern in them, as 
we do in other writers, the products of their 

19 



306 



Is Life Worth Living? 



age and of their circumstances. The materials 
out of which they formed their doctrines we can 
find in the lay world around them. And as we 
follow the Church's history farther, and examine 
the appearance and the growth of her great sub- 
sequent dogmas, we can trace all of them to a 
natural and a non-Christian origin. We can see, 
for instance, how in part at least, men conceived 
the idea of the Trinity from the teachings of 
Greek Mysticism; and how the theory of the 
atonement was shaped by the ideas of Eoman 
Jurisprudence. Everywhere, in fact, in the holy 
building supposed to have come down from God, 
we detect fragments of older structures, confess- 
edly of earthly workmanship. 

But the matter does not end here. Historical 
science not only shows us Christianity, with its 
sacred history, in this new light; but it sets other 
religions by the side of it, and shows us that their 
course through the world has been strangely simi- 
lar. They too have had there sacred books, and 
their incarnate Gods for prophets ; they have had 
their priesthoods, their traditions, and their grow- 
ing bodies of doctrine : there is nothing in Christi- 
anity that cannot find its counterpart, even to the 
most marked details, in the life of its founder. 
Two centuries, for instance, before the birth of 
Christ, Buddha is said to have been born without 
human father. Angels sang in heaven to announce 
his advent ; an aged hermit blessed him in his 



History and Claims of Christian Church. 307 



mother's arms ; a monarch was advised, though 
he refused, to destroy the child, who, it was pre- 
dicted, should be a universal ruler. It is told 
how he was once lost, and was found again in a 
temple; and how his young wisdom astonished 
all the doctors. A woman in a crowd was re- 
buked by him for exclaiming, "Blessed is the 
womb that bare thee." His prophetic career 
began when he was about thirty years old ; and 
one of the most solemn events of it is his tempta- 
tion in solitude by the evil one. Everywhere, 
indeed, in other religions we are discovering 
things that we once thought peculiar to the Chris- 
tian. And thus the fatal inference is being 
drawn on all sides, that they have all sprung from 
a common and an earthly root, and that one has 
no more certainty than another. And thus an- 
other blow is dealt to a faith that was already 
weakened. Not only, it is thought, can Christi- 
anity not prove itself in any supernatural sense 
to be sacred, but other religions prove that even 
in a natural sense it is not singular. It has not 
come down from heaven : it is not exceptional 
even in its attempt to rise to it. 

Such are the broad conclusions which in these 
days seem to be forced upon us ; and which 
knowledge, as it daily widens, would seem to be 
daily strengthening. But are these altogether so 
destructive as they seem ? Let us inquire into 
this more closely. If we do this, it will be soon 



303 



Is Life Worth Living? 



apparent that the so-called enlightened and criti- 
cal modern judgment has been misled as to this 
point by an error I have already dwelt upon. It 
has considered Christianity solely as represented 
by Protestantism ; or if it has glanced at Rome 
at all, it has ignorantly dismissed as weaknesses 
the doctrines which are the essence of her strength. 
Now, as far as Protestantism is concerned the 
modern critical judgment is undoubtedly in the 
right. Not only, as I have pointed out already, 
has experience proved the practical incoherency 
of its superstructure, but criticism has washed 
away like sand every vestige of its supernatural 
foundation. If Christianity relies solely, in proof 
of its revealed message to us, on the external evi- 
dences as to its history and the source of its doc- 
trines, it can never again hope to convince men. 
The supports of external evidence are quite in- 
adequate to the weight that is put upon them. 
They might possibly serve as props ; but they 
crush and crumble instantly, when they are used 
as pillars. And as pillars it is that Protestantism 
is compelled to use them. It will be quite suffi- 
cient, here, to confine our attention to the Bible, 
and the place which it occupies in the structure 
of the Protestant fabric. " There — in that book," 
says Protestantism, " is the Word of God , there 
is my unerring guide ; I listen to none but that. 
All special Churches have varied, and have there- 
fore erred; but it is my first axiom that that book 



History and Claims of Christian Church. 3C9 



has never erred. On that book, and on that book 
only, do I rest myself ; and out of its month shall 
yon judge me." And for a long time this lan- 
guage had much force in it ; for the Protestant 
axiom was received by all parties. It is true, 
indeed, as we have seen already, that in the ab- 
sence of an authoritative interpreter, an ambigu- 
ous testament would itself have little authority. 
But it took a long time for men to perceive this ; 
and all admitted meanwhile that the testament 
was there, and it at any rate meant something. 
But now all this is changed. The great Protest- 
ant axiom is received by the world no longer. To 
many it seems not an axiom, but an absurdity; 
at best it appears but as a very doubtful fact : and 
if external proof is to be the thing that guides 
us, we shall need more proof to convince us that 
the Bible is the Word of God, than that Protes- 
tantism is the religion of the Bible. 

We need not pursue the inquiry further, nor 
ask how Protestantism will fare at the hands of 
Comparative Mythology. The blow dealt by 
Biblical criticism is to all appearances mortal, 
and there is no need to look about for a second. 
But let us turn to Catholicism, and we shall see 
that the whole case is different. To its past his- 
tory, to external evidence, and to the religions 
outside itself, Protestant Christianity bears one 
relation, and Roman Christianity quite another. 

Protestantism offers itself to the world as a 



310 



Is Life Worth Living? 



strange servant might, bringing with it a number 
of written testimonials. It asks us to examine 
them, and by them to judge of its merits. It ex- 
pressly begs us not to trust to its own word. " I 
cannot/' it says, " rely upon my memory. It has 
failed me often ; it may fail me again. But look 
at these testimonials in my favor, and judge me 
only by them." And the world looks at them, 
examines them carefully ; it at last sees that they 
look suspicious, and that they may, very possibly, 
be forgeries. It asks the Protestant Church to 
prove them genuine ; and the Protestant Church 
cannot. 

But the Catholic Church comes to us in an ex- 
actly opposite way. She too brings with her the 
very same testimonials ; but she knows the un- 
certainty that obscures all remote evidences, and 
so at first she does not lay much stress upon them. 
First she asks us to make some acquaintance with 
herself; to look into her living eyes, to hear the 
words of her mouth, to watch her ways and works, 
and to feel her inner spirit; and then she says to us, 
" Can you trust me ? If you can, you must trust 
me all in all ; for the very first thing I declare to 
you is, I have never lied. Can you trust me thus 
far ? Then listen, and I will tell you my history. 
You have heard it told one way, I know; and that 
way often goes against me. My career, I admit 
it myself, has many suspicious circumstances. 
But none of them positively condemn me : all 



History and Claims of Christian Church. 311 



are capable of a guiltless interpretation. And 
when yon know me, as I am, you will give me 
the benefit of every doubt." It is thus that the 
Catholic Church presents the Bible to us. " Be- 
lieve the Bible, for my sake/ 5 she says, " not me 
for the Bible's." And the book, as thus offered 
us, changes its whole character. We have not 
the formal testimonials of a stranger ; we have 
instead the memoranda of a friend. We have 
now that presumption in their favor that in the 
former case was wanting altogether ; and all that 
we ask of the records now is, not that they con- 
tain any inherent evidence of their truth, but 
that they contain no inherent evidence of their 
falsehood. 

Farther, there is this point to remember, Cath- 
olic and Protestant alike declare the Bible to be 
inspired. But the Catholics can attach to inspira- 
tion a far wider, and less assailable meaning : for 
their Church claims for herself a perpetual living 
power, which can always concentrate the inspired 
element, be it never so diffused ; whereas for the 
Protestants, unless that element be closely bound 
up with the letter, it at once becomes intangible 
and eludes them altogether. And thus, whilst 
the latter have committed themselves to definite 
statements, now proved untenable, as to what 
inspiration is, the Catholic Church, strangely 
enough, has never done anything of the kind. 
She has declared nothing on the subject that is 



312 



Is Life Worth Living? 



to be held of faith. The whole question is still, 
within limits, an open one. As the Catholic 
Church, then, stands at present, it seems hard to 
say that, were we for other reasons inclined to 
trust her, she makes any claims, on behalf of her 
sacred books, which in the face of impartial his- 
tory, would prevent our doing so. 

Let us now go farther, and consider those great 
Christian doctrines which, though it is claimed 
that they are all implied in the Bible, are confes- 
sedly not expressed in it, and were confessedly 
not consciously assented to by the Church, till 
lon<? after the Christian Canon was closed. And 
here let us grant the modern critics their most 
hostile and extreme position. Let us grant that 
all the doctrines in question can be traced to ex- 
ternal, and often to non-Christian sources. And 
what is the result on Romanism ? Does this loiri- 
cally go any way whatever towards discrediting 
its claims % Let us consider the matter fairly, and 
we shall see that it has not even a tendency to do 
so. Here, as in the case of the Bible, the Church's 
doctrine of her infallibility meets all objections. 
For the real question here is, not in what store- 
house of opinions the Church found her doctrines. 

J. * 

but why she selected those she did, and why she 
rejected and condemned the rest. History and 
scientific criticism cannot answer this. History 
can show us only who baked the separate bricks; 
it cannot show us who made or designed the 



History and Claims of Christian Church. 313 



building. No one believes that the devil made 
the plans of Cologne Cathedral; but were we 
inclined to think he did, the story would be dis- 
proved in no way by our discovering from what 
quarries every stone had been taken. And the 
doctrines of the Church are but as the stones in 
a building, the letters of an alphabet, or the words 
of a language. Many are offered and few chosen. 
The supernatural action is to be detected in the 
choice. The whole history of the Church, in fact, 
as she herself tells it, may be described as a his- 
tory of supernatural selection. It is quite possible 
that she may claim it to be more than that; but 
could she vindicate for herself but this one faculty 
of an infallible choice, she would vindicate to the 
full her'ciaim to be under a superhuman guidance. 

The Church may be conceived of as a living 
organism, forever and on all sides putting forth 
feelers and tentacles, that seize, try, and seem to 
dally with all kinds of nutriment. A part of this 
she at length takes into herself. A large part 
she at length puts down again. Much that is 
thus rejected she seems for a long time on the 
point of choosing. But however slow may be the 
final decision in coming, however reluctant or 
hesitating it may seem to be, when it is once 
made, it is claimed for it that it is infallible. 
And this claim is one, as we shall see when we 
understand its nature, that no study of ecclesias- 
tical history, no study of comparative mythology 



314 



Is Life Worth Living? 



can invalidate now, or even promise to invalidate. 
There is nothing rash in saying this. The Church 
knows the difficulties that her past records pre- 
sent to us, especially that of the divine character 
of the Bible. But she knows too that this divinity 
is at present protected by its vagueness ; nor is 
s le likely to expose it more openly to its enemies, 
till some sure plan of defence has been devised 
for it. Rigid as were the opinions entertained as 
to Biblical inspiration, throughout the greater 
part of the Church's history, the Church has 
never formally assumed them as articles of faith. 
Had she done so, she might indeed have been 
C 3nvicted of error, for many of these opinions can 
be shown to be at variance with fact. But though 
she lived and breathed for so many centuries 
amongst them, though for ages none of her mem- 
bers perhaps ever doubted their truth, she has 
not laid them on succeeding ages : she has left 
them opinions still. A Catholic might well ad- 
duce this as an instance, not indeed of her super- 
natural selection, but of its counterpart, her 
supernatural rejection. 

And now, to turn from the past to the future, 
her possible future conduct in this matter will 
give us a very vivid illustration of her whole past 
procedure. It may be that before the Church 
defines inspiration exactly (if she ever does so), she 
will wait till lay criticism has done all it can do. 
She may then consider what views of the Bible 



History and Claims of Christian Church, 315 

are historically tenable, and what not; and may 
faithfully shape her teaching by the learning of 
this world, though it may have been gathered 
together for the express purpose of overthrowing 
her. Atheistic scholars may be quoted in her 
councils * and supercilious and sceptical philolo- 
gists, could they live another hundred years, might 
perhaps recognise their discoveries, even their 
words and phrases, embodied in an ecclesiastical 
definition. To the outer world such a definition 
would seem to be a mere natural production, 
But in the eyes of a Catholic it would be as truly 
supernatural, as truly the work of the Holy Spirit, 
as if it had come down ready-made out of heaven, 
with all the accompaniments of a rushing mighty 
wind, and of visible tongues of flame. Sanguine 
critics might expose the inmost history of the 
council in which the definition was made ; they 
might show the whole conduct of it, from one 
side to be but a meshwork of accident and of 
human motives; and they would ask triumphantly 
for any traces of the action of the divine spirit. 
But the Church would be unabashed. She would 
answer in the words of Job, " Behold I go forward, 
but He is not there ; and backward, but I cannot 
perceive Him ; but he knoweth the way that I 
take ; when He hath tried me, I shall come forth 
as gold. Behold my witness is in heaven, and 
my champion is on high. 5 ' 

And thus the doctrine of the Church's infalli- 



316 



Is Life Worth Living? 



bility has a side that is just the opposite of that 
which is commonly thought to be its only one. 
It is supposed to have simply gendered bondage ; 
not to have gendered liberty. But as a matter 
of fact it has done both ; and if we view the mat- 
ter fairly, we shall see that it has done the latter 
at least as completely as the former. The doctrine 
of infallibility is undoubtedly a rope that tethers 
those that hold it to certain real or supposed facts 
of the past ; but it is a rope that is capable of 
indefinite lengthening. It is not a fetter only; 
it is a support also ; and those who cling to it 
can venture fearlessly, as explorers, into currents 
of speculation that would sweep away altogether 
men who did but trust to their own powers of 
swimming. Nor does, as is often supposed, the 
centralizing of this infallibility in the person of 
one man present any difficulty from the Catholic 
point of view. It is said that the Pope might any 
day make a dogma of any absurdities that might 
happen to occur to him ; and that the Catholic 
would be bound to accept these, however strongly 
his reason might repudiate them. And it is quite 
true that the Pope might do this any day, in the 
sense that there is no external power to prevent 
him. But he who has assented to the central doc- 
trine of Catholicism knows that he never will. And 
it is precisely the obvious absence of any restraint 
from without that brings home to the Catholic his 
faith in the guiding power from within. 



History and Claims of Christian Church. 317 



Such, then, and so compacted is the Church of 
Rome, as a visible and earthly body, with a past 
and future history. And with so singular a firm- 
ness and flexibility is her frame knit together, that 
none of her modern enemies can get any lasting 
hold on her, or dismember her or dislocate her 
limbs on the racks of their criticism. 

But granting all this, what does this do for 
her ? Does it do more than present her to us as 
the toughest and most fortunate religion, out cf 
many co-ordinate and competing ones ? Does it 
tend in any way to set her on a different plat- 
form from the others ? And the answer to this 
is, that, so far as exact proof goes, we have 
nothing to expect or deal with in the matter, 
either one way or the other. The evidences at 
our disposal will impart a general tendency to 
our opinions, but no more than that. The gen- 
eral tendency here, however, is the very reverse 
of w^hat it is vulgarly supposed to be. So far 
from the similarities to her in other religions telling 
against the special claims of the Catholic Church, 
they must really, with the candid theist, tell very 
strongly in her favor. For the theist, all theisms 
have a profound element of truth in them ; and 
all alleged revelations will, in his eyes, be natural 
theisms, struggling to embody themselves in some 
authorised and authoritative form. The Catholic 
Church, as we have seen, is a human organism, 
capable of receiving the Divine Spirit ; and this 



318 



Is Life Wbrth Living? 



is what all other religious bodies, in so far as they 
have claimed authority for their teaching, have 
consciously or unconsciously attempted to be 
likewise ; only the Catholic Church represents 
success, where the others represent failure : and 
thus these, from the Catholic stand-point, are 
abortive and incomplete Catholicisms. The Beth- 
esda of human faith is world-wide and as old as 
time; only in one particular spot an angel has 
come down and troubled it ; and the waters have 
been circling there, thenceforth in a healing vor- 
tex. Such is the sort of claim that the Catholic 
Church makes for herself; and, if this be so 
what she is, does not belie what she claims to be. 
Indeed, the more we compare her with the other 
religions, her rivals, the more, even where she 
most resembles them, shall we see in her a some- 
thing that marks her off from them. The others 
are like vague and vain attempts at a forgotten 
tune ; she is like the tune itself, which is recog- 
nised the instant it is heard, and which has been 
so near to us all the time, though so immeasurably 
far away from us. The Catholic Church is the 
only dogmatic religion that has seen what dogma- 
tism really implies, and what will, in the long run, 
be demanded of it, and she contains in herself all 
appliances for meeting these demands. She alone 
has seen that if there is to be an infallible voice 
in the world, this voice must be a living one, as 
capable of speaking now as it ever was in the 



History and Claims of Christian Church, 319 



past; and that as the world's capacities for know- 
ledge grow, the teacher must be always able to 
unfold to it a fuller teaching. The Catholic Church 
is the only historical religion that can conceivably 
thus adapt itself to the wants of the present day, 
without virtually ceasing to be itself. It is the 
only religion that can keep its identity without 
losing its life, and keep its life without losing 
its identity ; that can enlarge its teachings with- 
out changing them ; that can be always the same, 
and yet be always developing. 

All this, of course, does not prove that Catholic 
ism is the truth ; but it will show the theist that, 
for all that the modern world can tell him, it may 
be. And thus much at least will by-and-by come 
to be recognised generally. Opinion, that has 
been clarified on so many subjects, cannot remain 
forever turbid here. A change must come, and a 
change can only be for the better. At present 
the so-called leaders of enlightened and liberal 
thought are in this matter, so far as fairness and 
insight go, on a level with the wives and mothers 
of our small provincial shopkeepers, or the beadle 
or churchwarden of a country parish. But pre- 
judice, even when so virulent and so dogged as 
this, will lift and disappear some day like a Lon- 
don fog ; and then the lineaments of the question 
will confront us clearly — the question : but who 
shall decide the answer ? 

What I have left to say bears solely upon this. 



320 



Is Life Worth Living? 



CHAPTER XIII 

BELIEF AND WILL. 

"Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for 
righteousness" 

A EGUMENTS are like the seed, or like the 
A soul, as Paul conceived of it, which he com- 
pared to seecl. They are not quickened unless 
they die. As long as they remain for us in the 
form of arguments they do no work. Their work 
begins only, after a time and in secret, when they 
have sunk down into memory, and have been left 
to lie there ; when the hostility and distrust they 
were regarded with dies away ; when, unper- 
ceived, they melt into the mental system, and, 
becoming part of oneself, effect a turning round 
of the soul. This is true, at least, when the mat- 
ters dealt with are such as have engaged us here. 
It may be true, too, of those who discern and urge 
the arguments, just as well as of those upon whom 
they urge them. But the immediate barrenness 
of much patient and careful reasoning should not 
make us think that it is lost labor. One Wciy 
or other it will some day bear its fruit. Some- 
times the intellect is the servant of the heart. At 
other times the heart must follow slowly upon the 
heels of the intellect. 



Belief and Will 821 



And such is the case now. For centuries man's 
faith and all his loftier feelings had their way 
made plain before them. The whole empire of 
human thought belonged to them. But this old 
state of things endures no longer. Upon this 
Empire, as upon that of Rome, calamity has at 
last fallen. A horde of intellectual barbarians 
has burst in upon it, and has occupied by force 
the length and breadth of it. The result has been 
astounding. Had the invaders been barbarians 
only, they might haye been repelled easily ; but 
they were barbarians armed with the most power- 
ful weapons of civilisation. They were a pheno- 
menon new to history: they showed us real know- 
ledge in the hands of real ignorance: and the 
work of the combination thus far has been ruin, 
not reorganisation. Few great movements at the 
beginning have been conscious of their own true 
tendency ; but no great movement has mistaken 
it like modern Positivism. Seeing just too well 
to have the true instinct of blindness, and too ill 
to have the proper guidance from sight, it has 
tightened its clutch upon the world of thought, 
only to impart to it its own confusion. What lies 
before men now is to reduce this confusion to 
order, by a patient and calm employment of the 
intellect. Intellect itself will never re-kindle faith, 
or restore any of those powers that are at present 
so failing and so feeble ; but it will work like a 
pioneer to prepare their way before them, if they 



322 Is Life Worth Living? 

are ever revived otherwise, encouraged in its 
labors, perhaps not even by hope, but at any 
rate by the hope of hope. 

As a pioneer, and not as a preacher, I have tried 
to indicate the real position in which modern 
knowledge has placed us, and the way in which 
it puts the problem of life before us. I have tried 
to show that, whatever ultimately its tendency 
may prove to be, it cannot be the tendency that, 
by the school that has given it to us, it is supposed 
to have been ; and that it either does a great deal 
more than that school thinks it does, or a great 
deal less. History would teach us this, even if 
nothing else did. The school in question has 
proceeded from denial to denial, thinking at each 
successive moment that it had reached its final 
halting-place, and had struck at last on a solid 
and firm foundation. First it denied the Church 
to assert the Bible ; then it denied the Bible to 
assert God; then it denied God to assert the 
moral dignity of man : and there, if it could re- 
main, it would. But what it would do is of no 
avail. It is not its own master ; it is compelled 
to move onwards ; and now, under the force of its 
own relentless logic, this last resting-place is be- 
ginning to fail also. It professed to compensate for 
its denials of God's existence by a freer and more 
convincing re-assertion of man's dignity. But the 
principles which obliged it to deny the first belief 
are found to be even more fatal to the substitute. 



Belief and Will. 



323 



" Unless I have seen with my eyes I will not be- 
lieve/' expresses a certain mental tendency that 
has always had existence. But till science and 
its positive methods began to draw on the world, 
this tendency was vague and wavering. Positive 
science supplied it with solid nutriment. Its 
body grew denser ; its shape more and more de- 
finite ; and now the completed portent is spread- 
ing its denials through the whole universe. So far 
as spirit goes and spiritual aspirations, it has left 
existence empty, swept and garnished. If spirit 
is to enter in again and dwell there, we must seek 
by other methods for it. Modern thought has 
not created a new doubt ; it has simply made 
perfect an old one; and has advanced it from 
the distant regions of theory into the very middle 
of our hearts and lives. It has made the ques- 
tion of belief or of unbelief the supreme practical 
question for us. It has forced us to stake every- 
thing on the cast of a single die. What are we ? 
Have we been hitherto deceived in ourselves, or 
have we not? And is every hope that has 
hitherto nerved our lives, melting at last away 
from us, utterly and for ever % Or are we indeed 
what we have been taught to think we are ? Have 
we indeed some aims- that we may still call high 
and holy— still some aims that are more than 
transitory ? And have we still some right to that 
reverence that w r e have learnt to cherish for our- 
selves ? 



324 



fs Life Worth Living f 



Here lie the difficulties. The battle is to be 
fought here — here at the very threshold — at the 
entrance to the spiritual world. Are we moral 
and spiritual beings, or are we not ? That is the 
decisive question, which we must say our Yes or 
No to. If, with our eyes open, and with all our 
hearts, it be given us to say Yes — to say Yes 
without fear, and firmly, and in the face of every- 
thing—then there will be little more to fear. We 
shall have fought the good fight, we shall have 
kept the faith ; and whatever we lack more, will 
without doubt be added to us. From this belief 
in ourselves we shall pass to the belief in God, as 
its only rational basis and its only emotional com- 
pletion ; and, perhaps, from a belief in God, to a 
recognition of His audible voice amongst us. 
But at any rate, whatever after-difficulties beset 
us, they will not be new difficulties ; only those 
we had braved at first, showing themselves more 
clearly. 

But that first decision — how shall we make it ? 
Who or what shall help us, or give us counsel ? 
There is no evidence that can do so in the sensi- 
ble world around us. The universe, as positive 
thought approaches it, is blind and dumb about 
it. Science and history are sullen, and blind, and 
dumb. They await upon our decision before 
they will utter a single word to us : and that deci- 
sion, if we have a will at all, it lies with our own 
will— with our will alone, to make. It may, 



Belief and Will. 



325 



indeed, be said that the will has to create itself 
by an initial exercise of itself, in an assent to its 
own existence. If it can do this, one set of ob- 
stacles is surmounted ; but others yet confront 
us. The world into which the moral will has 
borne itself — not a material world, but a spiritual 
— a world which the will's existence alone makes 
possible, this world is not silent, like the other, 
but it is torn and divided against itself, and is 
resonant with unending contradictions. Its first 
aspect is that of a place of torture, a hell of the in- 
tellect, in which reason is to be racked forever by a 
tribe of sphinx-like monsters, themselves despair- 
ing. Good and evil inhabit there, confronting 
each other, forever unreconciled : there is omni- 
potent power baffled, and omnipotent mercy un- 
exercised. Is the will strong enough to hold on 
through this baffling and monstrous world, and 
not to shrink back and bid the vision vanish ? 
Can w e still resolve to say, " I believe, although 
it is impossible ?" Is the will to assert our own 
moral nature — our own birthright in eternity, 
strong enough to bear us on ? 

The trial is a hard one, and whilst we doubt 
and hesitate under it the universal silence of the 
vast physical world itself disheartens us. Who 
are we, in the midst of this unheeding universe, 
that we can claim for ourselves so supreme a heri- 
tage ; that we can assert for ourselves other laws 
than those which seem to be all-pervading, and 



326 Is Life Worth Living? 

that we can dream of breaking through them 
into a something else beyond 1 

And yet it may be that faith will succeed and 
conquer sight — that the preciousness of the trea- 
sure we cling to will nerve us with enough 
strength to retain it. It may be that man, hav- 
ing seen the way that, unaided, he is forced to go, 
will change his attitude ; that, finding only weak- 
ness in pride, he will seek for strength in humil- 
ity, and will again learn to say, " I believe al- 
though I never can comprehend." Once let him 
say this, his path will again grow clearer for. him. 
Through confusion, and doubt, and darkness, the 
brightness of God's countenance will again be 
visible; and by-and-by again he may hear the 
Word calling him. From his first assent to his 
own moral nature he must rise to a theism, and 
he may rise to the recognition of a Church — to a 
visible embodiment of that moral nature of his, 
as directed and joined to its one aim and end — 
to its delight, and its desire, and its completion. 
Then he will see all that is high and holy taking 
a distinct and helping form for him. Grace and 
mercy will come to him through set and certain 
channels. His nature will be redeemed visibly 
from its weakness and from its littleness — re- 
deemed, not in dreams or in fancy, but in fact. 
God Himself will be his brother and his father ; 
he will be near akin to the Power that is always, 
and is everywhere. His love of virtue wiU be no 



Belief and Wilt. 



327 



longer a mere taste of his own : it will be the 
discernment and taking to himself of the eternal 
strength and of the eternal treasure ; and, what- 
ever he most reveres in mother, or wife, or sister 
— this he will know is holy, everywhere and for- 
ever, and is exalted high over ail things in one of 
like nature with theirs, the Mother of grace, the 
Parent of sweet clemency, who will protect him 
from the enemy, and save him at the hour of 
death. 

Such is conception of himself, and of his place 
in existence, that, always implicit in man, man 
has at last developed. He has at last conceived 
his race — the faithful of it — as the bride of God. 
Is this majestic conception a true one, or is it a 
dream only, with no abiding substance ? Is it 
merely a misty vision rising up like an exhalation 
from the earth, or does a something more come 
down to it out of heaven, and strike into it sub- 
stance and reality % This figure of human dreams 
has grown and grown in stature : does anything 
divine descend to it, and so much as touch its lips 
or its lifted hands ? If so, it is but the work of 
a moment. The contact is complete. Life, and 
truth, and force, like an electric current, pass 
into the whole frame. It lives, it moves, it 
breathes : it has a body and a being : the divine 
and the eternal is indeed dwelling amongst us. 
And thus, though mature knowledge may seem, 
as it still widens, to deepen the night around us ; 



328 



Is Life Worth Living? 



though the universe yawn wider on all sides of 
us, in vaster depths, in more unfathomable, soul- 
less gulfs ; though the roar of the loom of time 
grow more audible and more deafening in our 
ears — yet through the night and through the 
darkness the divine light of our lives will only 
burn the clearer : and this speck of a world as it 
moves through the blank immensity will bear the 
light of all the worlds upon its bosom. 

Thinkers like Mr. Leslie Stephen say that such 
beliefs as these belong to dream-land ; and they 
are welcome if they please to keep their names. 
Their terminology at least has this merit, that it 
recognises the dualism of the two orders of things 
it deals with. Let them keep their names if they 
will ; and in their language the case amounts to 
this — that it is only for the sake of the dreams 
that visit it that the world of reality has any cer- 
tain value for us. Will not the dreams continue, 
w hen the reality has passed, away ? 



LRBJr28- 



